ESSAY- 
ON 

LTON 








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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



fymtye digital) Classics 



MACAULAY'S 



ESSAY ON MILTON 



EDI TED, H'/TH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, ETC. 
BY 

ALBERT PERRY WALKER, M.A. 

MASTER, AND TEACHER OF ENGLISH AND HISTORY, IN THE 
ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON 



D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 



1900 



£855 

TWO COFlti DECEIVED, 

Ubrtnr of C«ngr««% 
Office of th« 

JUN 7 - 1900 

BegUUr of CooyrtfMfc 

a, /<///? 

SECOND COPY, 



"S4082 

Copyright, 1900 
By D. C. Heath & Co. 



PREFACE. 



In the opinion of the editor of this book, the function of the 
annotator of texts for secondary school use is to guide teacher and 
pupil in those paths of study which will make the reading of the 
text most fruitful in literary training and culture, and to furnish 
such an equipment of subsidiary information as shall minimize the 
pupil's expenditure of time in purely mechanical labor, such as the 
often baffling search for explanatory facts, and the reading of 
irrelevant matter. No editor should feel justified in adding to the 
number of annotated editions of standard works now extant, unless 
his own work embodies pedagogical principles, which seem to him 
to be vital, but which he considers to be not sufficiently empha- 
sized in other editions. Perhaps the editor may be pardoned for 
stating here, in a slightly altered form, certain pedagogical prin- 
ciples already set forth in the preface to his volume of Selections 
from Milton 's Paradise Lost, principles which have guided him 
also in the preparation of this book. 

The first of these is that matters of merely incidental informa- 
tion should never be forced upon the attention of the reader. In 
this book all such matter is set apart by itself, and arranged alpha- 
betically, as in an encyclopaedia or other work of reference. Thus 
only those who feel the need of that information in order to com- 
prehend the text are led to consult this matter, and such pupils 
may readily obtain it. 

The second principle is that matters constituting an inter-related 
mass of facts, some knowledge of which the reader must possess before 
he can read the text intelligently, should be given to him, tiotin shreds 
and patches attached to single passages of the text, but as an organic 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

whole, to be studied consecutively in its entirety before the reading 
of the text is begun. In the case of these essays, the knowledge 
absolutely requisite to an intelligent reading of the works is a 
knowledge of that series of historical events which serves as a back- 
ground for the essayist's studies of men and events. The outline 
sketch of English history (p. xvi) should therefore be studied 
before the essay proper is read. If this is done, pupils will find but 
little occasion for looking up historical facts; but whenever a refer- 
ence in the text to any historical event seems obscure to any pupil, 
he will find the facts needed for its explanation set forth in its 
relations to the movement of which it forms a part. 

The third principle is that the essential function of notes is to sug- 
gest to the student trains of thought, points of view, matter for 
reflection, the results of which may serve as a basis for critical dis- 
cussions with his teacher and his fellow-pupils in the classroom. In 
other words, the notes should not give to the pupil all that a trained 
reader would find in the work, but they should stimulate him to get 
for himself all that is of value, by calling to his attention its precious 
quality, and by pointing the way to its attainment. 

But is not the pupil robbed of much useful discipline in research 
by a type of editing which offers so much material between the 
covers of a single book, and is not the teacher robbed of opportuni- 
ties that rightfully belong to him, by notes that ask many of his 
questions in advance? No; both are merely relieved of an ele- 
ment of drudgery in their work, whereby they may the more joy- 
ously traverse together a path where the interest is varied and 
inexhaustible. 

The text is that prepared by Macaulay for the first collected 
edition of his essays. 

A. P. W. 

Boston, January, 1900. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Preface Hi 

Introduction 

Macaulay's Life (Outline) vi 

Suggestions for Study . . . . . . ix 

Historical Introduction (English History from 1603 to 

1689) xvi 

, Chronological Table of Milton's Life and Contemporary 

Events ' . . xxvii 

Bibliography (Macaulay and Milton) . . . xxviii 

THE ESSAY ON MILTON . \ 1 

Notes — Illustrative and Explanatory 73 

Critical and Suggestive . . . . . 8& 

Questions for Review ....... 100 

Explanatory Index . 103 



BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE OF MACAULAY'S LIFE AS 
RELATED TO HIS PRINCIPAL LITERARY WORK. 

1800 He was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, England. 

25 Oct. His father was a Presbyterian clergyman, his mother a 
Quaker. In early childhood he was an insatiable reader. 
After the year 

1812 He began his formal education by attending a private 
academy. 

1818 He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won dis- 
tinction for brilliant work in all studies except mathe- 
matics. He was associated with the college for more 
than seven years (Craven University Scholar, 1821; B.A., 
1822; Fellow, 1824). (Contributions to Knight's Quar- 
terly Magazine, 1822; Essay on Milton, 1825.) Having 
determined to pursue the profession of law, in 

1826 He was called to the bar, but devoted much of his time to 
literature, as his Essay on Milton, contributed to the 
Edinburgh Revieiv, had gained him instant popularity. 
To that magazine he contributed regularly for several 
years. (Essays on Machiavelli, 1 827; Dry den, January, 
1828; History, May, 1828; Ha Ham's History, September, 
1828, etc.) 

1830 He entered Parliament as a Whig member for Calne, on the 
nomination of Lord Lansdowne. He immediately became 
an ardent advocate of political reforms, and added to his 
reputation as a writer that of an orator. His literary 
activity was not diminished by his new duties -(Essays on 
Bunyan, December, 1830; Byron, June, 1831; Johnson, 
September, 1 83 1; Mirabeau, July, 1832; Walpole, Octo- 
ber, 1833, etc.), while Jiis political services to the cause of 



MILTON. vii 

reform won him the suffrages of the city of Leeds in the 
elections of 1832, and the gratitude of the Whig leaders. 

1833 He was made Secretary of the Board of Control. In the 

same year his speech on a Bill for the Government of 
India proved his exhaustive acquaintance with the condi- 
tions and needs of that country. Accordingly he was 
appointed a member of the Supreme Council of India and 
its legal adviser, at a salary of ;£i 0,000 a year. 

1834 He went to India in this capacity, and devoted his powers to 

solving administrative problems and to formulating a Code 
. of Laws for India, his literary gifts meanwhile finding but 
little expression. {Essays on Mackintosh's History, 1835; 
Bacon, 1837.) Having saved from his ample income a 
sum sufficient to relieve him from anxiety for the future, in 

1838 He returned to England, and was soon elected to Parlia- 

ment as a member for Edinburgh. 

1839 He became Secretary of War in the ministry of Lord Mel- 

bourne. On the accession to power of the Tories in 
1841 He became an active member of the Opposition to Peel. 
He resumed his frequent contributions to the Edinburgh 
Review. {Essays on Clive, 1840; Leigh Hunt, Lord 
Holland, LLa stings, 1 84 1 ; Frederick the Great, 1842; 
Madame D'Arblay, Addison, 1843, etc Meanwhile he 
tempted fortune in a new line of literary activity {Lays of 
Ancient Rome, 1842), and also prepared the first collected 
edition of his Essays (1843). 
1846 He became Paymaster of the Forces in the new Whig 
ministry of Russell. In the election of the succeeding year, 
he was rejected by the voters of Edinburgh because of his 
independent attitude on religious and other questions. 
This defeat left him free to prosecute the work which he 
had long designed to make the crowning literary produc- 
tion of his life, the History of England from the Accession 
of fames L. (Vols. I. and II., 1848). 
1852 He was reelected Member of Parliament for Edinburgh with- 
out any canvass on his own behalf, but resigned his seat 
four years later, as the completion of his History was still 



viii MILTON. 

his foremost consideration (Vols. III. and IV., 1855), and 
his failing health warned him that he must set a limit 
to his activities. In recognition of his services to the state 
in so many fields of labor, in 
1857 He was elevated to the peerage as "Baron Macaulay of 
Rothley." Besides his labors upon the History, he now 
found time to contribute to the Encyclopedia Britannica 
a series of biographies of eminent men (Atterbuiy, 1853; 
Bunyan, 1854; Goldsmith, Johnson, 1856; William Pitt, 
1859). His health, although failing, gave no serious 
cause of alarm until in # 

1859 He died of disease of the heart, and was buried in the 
Dec. 28 " Poet's Corner " in Westminster Abbey, at the foot of the 
monument to Addison. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF THE ESSAY. 

i. The Study of a Type. 

The student of literature, like the student in any branch General 
of natural science, will profit by his studies only so far as he principles 
learns what to observe. His untrained mind fails at first to of 1 -" terar 7 
attend to those elements of the work that are vital, being 
easily distracted by non-essentials, and incapable of selecting from 
the body of matter presented the portions which, from their greater 
importance, should command special attention. Thus his percep- 
tion of values is blurred, and he fails to receive and assimilate the 
mental nourishment which the author has set before him. This 
assimilation, however, will be very greatly hastened if he will first 
acquaint himself with the purpose aimed at and the methods pur- 
sued by the author in the production which' forms his subject of 
study, just as he would examine a building with a clearer compre- 
hension, and criticise it with a sounder judgment, if he knew that 
the architect had adopted the Gothic or the Romanesque type of 
architecture as a basis of treatment, and that he had designed the 
building for a library, an opera-house, or a state capitol. .The 
student of Macaulay's Essays, then, will gain much by first ascer- 
taining the genesis and the nature of the literary essay. 

The word " Essay," as the name of a literary type, must Elements 
not be confounded with the word in its other senses. Pope of an 
uses it (A/oral Essays) as a title for a didactic poem; Locke " Essay." 
uses it (Essay Concerning Human Understanding) as a title for 
an exhaustive philosophical treatise; but these are by-uses of the 
word. The genesis of the typical literary essay is of the following 
character: A writer of a reflective temper of mind undertakes 
to treat in literary form some subject in history, letters, manners, 
morals — in fact, any phase of intellectual or physical life — not 
primarily because he wishes to instruct the reader, but because 



x MILTON. 

he perceives that the theme is capable of artistic treatment. As 
scenes in nature suited to be put into a picture are recognized as 
being picturesque, so this subject seems to him literatesque. 1 About 
this subject he allows his fancy to play, approaching it from various 
points of viezv, enriching it with ornaments supplied by wit and 
fancy, perhaps straying into disgressions upon topics related to the 
main theme only by remote chains of association, and combining 
all these elements into an harmonious structure that exhibits a dis- 
tinct unity and orderly relation of parts, even when most informal. 
All this discussion he confines within such limits as will permit of 
its being perused at a single brief sitting, so that it may convey a 
certain unity of impression. Thus is produced the " Essay," a 
literary type which the reader may confidently expect to be dis- 
tinctive in its choice of subject (any object which is of interest to 
the observant mind), its temper (reflective and critical), its method 
(a survey from shifting points of view), its scope (limited), and its 
purpose (to interest and please by its aesthetic quality). 

2. The Study of a Particular Author. 

Distinctive The Essays of Macaulay, however, are not of the purely 
character of literary type. His works, classed as essays, constituted a 
Macaulay's distinct departure from the norm established by his English 
predecessors, — Bacon, Addison, Steele, and Johnson. They 
are really brief historical treatises, designed to furnish instruction 
as well as entertainment. Therefore the facts constituting the 
subject-matter (which are generally subordinated to the literary 
treatment) here rise in relative importance, and the truth of his 
assertions of fact and the validity of his deductions from them 
become a matter of vital interest to the student. ' Thus, the Essay 
on Milton, ostensibly a review of his life and work, is made by 
Macaulay to serve as a vehicle for his special contributions to the 
theory of poetic composition, and to the history of the Puritan 
movement in England, while that on Addison aims primarily to 
analyze in a scientific spirit the political and social conditions that 
shaped Addison's work, and to clear up certain disputed points in 

1 W. Bagehot, Literary Studies, Vol. II., 341. 



MILTON. xi 

regard to Addison's relations with his contemporaries. In sum, 
Macaulay's aim is rather to present objective facts to the reader, 
than to share with him the play of his fancy about them. Further- 
more, the nature of his subjects, and the character of the publication 
to which the Essays were contributed, caused him to extend their 
limits much beyond those ordinarily recognized as suitable to an 
essay. A recognition of these peculiarities must have its due effect 
in determining the method of study to be applied to Macaulay's 
Essays. While their literary form will present features of marked 
interest, the subject-matter will claim more attention than in essays 
designed simply to please. 

3. Elements Which should command Attention. 

(a) Subject-matter. 

As has been intimated above, only a trained reader can receive 
all that a skilful writer like Macaulay has it in his power to give. 

First in order of thought, of course, are the facts and the . 
opinions which constitute his contribution to the world's "^^ 
thought on the subject. The reader who, after reading the 
Essay on Milton, cannot state what Macaulay believed to be the 
distinctive gift in virtue of which Milton's work differs from that 
of any other poet, or what opinion he held in regard to Milton's 
political attitude toward the Cromwell regime, or what he con- 
sidered to be the marked difference between Milton's work and that 
of Dante, — that reader has wholly failed to accomplish the imme- 
diate purpose for which he reads. 

If these fundamental judgments of the author are not 

, . , . , . , rr L Related 

certain to be retained m the memory without special effort, 

• I* • lOLHCb. 

still less so are those portions which constitute digressions 
from the main thought. These are often of great importance, since 
they are likely to treat of matters of which the essayist can speak 
with especial authority, and which he therefore welcomes a pretext 
for introducing into his essay. For example, the untrained reader 
is likely to forget that in the Essay on Milton occurs a long di- 
gression treating of the relation of poetry to civilization (^s 10 to 
18), a brief but scathing arraignment of the corrupt court of the 



xii MILTON. 

Restoration (^[ 78), an elaborate character study of Charles I. and 
of the Puritan party (^fs 53 to 63), and a disquisition on the method 
of expressing the supernatural in terms of the physical world (^fs 37 
to 43) ; for all these are skilfully woven into the tissue of the essay 
without the slightest impairment of its unity and coherence. They 
should command special attention for this latter reason, if for no 
other. 

The most direct result, then, of the study of Macaulay's Essays 
should be the vitalizing of the pupil's knowledge of two great 
periods of history, and the stimulating of his power of reflection 
upon historical events and tendencies through his critical scrutiny 
of Macaulay's judgments of men and events.. 

(b) Structure. 

The writer has become convinced, by long experience with 
Method of p U pij s> t ] iat ^jg ma stery over " what the essayist has to say " 
4 & j s mos t rea( iily obtained by tracing the original process of 
thought pursued by the author in constructing his essay, — 
by analyzing what he has synthesised. But it is to be noted 
that a good topical analysis must not only express the successive 
thoughts, but also exhibit their logical relations. Such an outline as 
the one framed by Carlyle, to be published in connection with his 
Life of Bums, 1 illustrates very forcibly the irregular and fragmen- 
tary habit of thinking which constitutes a distinct fault in Carlyle's 
mental procedure, and consequently in his literary work. Such an 
outline can do little to aid the reader in securing a structural view 
of the essay; for the main divisions of thought, the relation of sub- 
ordinate to primary ideas, and the development of an idea from a 
preceding one are not exhibited either by the form or by the phrase- 
ology of the outline with sufficient clearness to render it valuable as 
an aid to the memory. But a correct analytical study of 
Value literary structure is doubly disciplinary, — it fits the pupil, 

. , when in the attitude of a listener, to receive the thoughts 

method. ' . > . 

which great authors have to convey, and, when in the attitude 

of a speaker, to impart his ideas, and both with a clarity and com- 
1 See Carlyle's Life of Burns, Edited by A. J. George. (Heath.) 



MILTON. xin 

prehensive reach of thought unknown before. For in the former 
case, through this habit of observing successive changes of subject 
and their logical connection, his mind follows lectures, debates, and 
all spoken discourse with perfect grasp of the whole and its com- 
ponent parts, and he is able to reproduce them with great fulness 
and accuracy ; while in the latter case (since like begets like) his 
own forms of expression begin to exhibit the same clear, orderly, 
systematic qualities which he has found to be characteristic of the 
work of all good writers. 

In view of the large amount of ground to be covered, and 
the necessarily limited time that can be given to this phase e . 
of study, it is hardly likely that pupils can find time to perfect ^ bQQk 
a detailed analysis of the entire text of one of Macaulay's and ^.^ 
essays. For this reason, and in order to make the pupil's use> 
initiation into this study of structure quite simple, enabling 
him to grasp readily the proper method of structural analysis, the 
text has been partially analyzed by the editor, enough analytical 
work, however, being left undone to allow practice by the pupil, 
who should prepare a detailed analysis of the essay, in which, by 
suitable indentation, the relation of each subordinate topic to some 
more comprehensive one should be indicated. When this analysis 
has been satisfactorily completed, the student will have in his pos- 
session a compacted framework or skeleton of Macaulay's subject- 
matter, to which, through the process of mental association, he 
can easily attach the specific facts and judgments which constitute 
Macaulay's contribution to the reader's knowledge of the person or 
subject under discussion. 

(c) Form. 

Macaulay is noteworthy for his limited use of superficial 
ornament. He employs similes, metaphors, and the more ornamenti 
artificial figures of speech very sparely. It will be found that 
he rarely makes use of these figures (as do the poets) for the pur- 
pose of creating beautiful pictures in the mind. His similes are 
merely devices for securing clearness and vigor of impression. The 
comparisons are drawn almost wholly from historical and literary 



xiv MILTON. 

sources, not from the imaginary scenes to which the poet commonly 
has recourse. But he is enabled, by his prodigious memory, so 
easily to recall the details of such facts that he repeatedly makes the 
mistake of assuming a like power in his readers, and thus his illus- 
trations are sometimes more obscure than the point upon which they 
assume to throw light. So numerous are his historical allusions that 
the student is not recommended to attempt to trace them in detail. 1 
In the dress of his Essays, Macaulay relies for elegance not 

upon the jewels of speech, but upon the form and texture of 
ornament. , , . , ; 

his work. In his paragraphs, the opening sentences either 

clearly announce the subject, or serve as transitional passages from 
one topic to another. Unity is preserved with scrupulous care. 
He employs long and short sentences in judicious alternation. He 
makes use most frequently of the " periodic " structure, in which the 
thought is held in suspense for an appreciable time, in order that 
it may then be carried onward and upward to a dramatic climax. 
He also delights in the " balanced " sentence. Indeed, the love 
of contrast was developed in him so strongly as almost to consti- 
tute a fault; and it is to be feared that occasionally his opinion, or at 
least the expression of his opinion, was determined by the possi- 
bility of setting forth some brilliant rhetorical antithesis. 

4. Fruits of this Method of Study. 

An li -a- ^ f°^ ows fr° m these observations that one of the fruits of 

tion to the the study of Macaulay's Essays should be the vitalizing of the 
study of pupil's knowledge of rhetorical principles. In them he may 
rhetoric. study, not passages artirically constructed by a pedagogue to 
exemplify a rule of procedure, but the living, effective messages 
framed by a man for the purpose of interesting and convincing 

1 The question of how thoroughly pupils should be expected to in- 
vestigate the allusions contained in a literary work is so much a matter 
of dispute that the editor is tempted to utter a word of advice or caution. 
In Macaulay's works the allusions are abundant and recondite. They 
consist largely of matters of special knowledge, quite outside of any 
general literary equipment ; and in his case, at least, the student^ of 
secondary school grade should not expend time and strength in investi- 



MILTON. xv 

his fellow-men — the written product, from which through obser- 
vation the rules of effective expression may be derived. If through 
Macaulay's example the pupil should be inspired to endeavor to 
make his own written expression more coherent, orderly, direct, 
clear, vigorous, the study of these essays would need no further 
justification. If, in addition to this, his power of retaining and 
using historical information should be strengthened, if his mind 
should be stored with vividly conceived scenes and characters 
highly significant in the history of his race, and if above all, his 
aesthetic nature should be wakened to respond to the charm which 
good literature exerts over the cultivated mind, so that he might 
enter into a more complete life through his study of good litera- 
ture, — then only would he have utilized to the full the opportuni- 
ties for culture which these Essays present. 

gating an allusion if the expression of which it forms a part is clearly 
understood in its meaning and its bearing upon the subject of discussion. 
Of all the lines of investigation suggested by any of Macaulay's Essays, 
the most profitable is not the investigation of allusions, but the reading of 
illustrative passages from the works of the author who is the subject of 
criticism. 



SKETCH OF ENGLISH HISTORY, i 608-1688. 
1. The English Government. 

Form of At the time of Milton's birth, Elizabeth, the last of the 

govern- Tudor monarchs of England, had been dead five years. The 

ment. fabric of government which she bequeathed to her successors, 

the Stuart monarchs, was essentially feudal in form. The principle 
of heredity governed the descent of the crown, and the nation was 
divided into three social classes, on lines determined by feudal con- 
ditions : the nobility (or peerage), the lesser aristocracy (or knight- 
hood), and the commons. 

The legislative power resided in Parliament, the upper 
house of which contained all hereditary nobles (" Lords 
Temporal ") and all archbishops and bishops of the national church 
("Lords Spiritual"), while the lower house contained representa- 
tives from each county (" Knights of the Shire ") and from each 
lesser political unit or borough (" burgesses"). Owing to a system 
of restrictions on suffrage and to the fact that the land was owned 
largely by nobles whose tenants were entirely subservient to 

ppom lv. t h e j r w i s hes, the election of many members was wholly a 
members. . ' . , 

matter of form, they being merely the appointees of the 

owner of the borough. 

The executive work of the government was intrusted by 
e ing s ^ monarc j 1 to officials appointed by him on the ground of 
ministers. ...... r . . , . ■ . . . , 

their ability, or of their subservience to his wishes, or too 

often of their personal acceptability alone. 

The Privy Council had been originally a small body of the 

~ ., most eminent nobles, who were summoned by the monarch 

Council. . . , ' . ' 

to give him special advice upon matters of state policy. 

Included in it were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord 

Chief Justice, the Lord Treasurer, the two Archbishops of the State 

Church (see p. xvii), the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the 

xvi 



MILTON. xvii 

Earl Marshal, etc. Thus it contained elements from the departments 
of Finance, Justice, etc., and a permanent group of high executive 
officers, mostly appointive, but some {e.g. archbishops) members by 
virtue of their office. It modified the king's arbitrary power by 
refusing the seal (see Index) to royal orders of which it disapproved, 
but as its members were almost all subject to removal from their 
offices, it presented no insurmountable obstacle to the king's will. 

The Privy Council had risen to great importance under Powers 
the Tudors, first by gaining control of certain territory, and of the 
later by assuming the right to issue proclamations, to create Council, 
courts, and to exercise judicial powers in cases of supreme impor- 
tance in the state. 1 Thus the Stuart monarchs found in the Privy 
Council a strong weapon of tyranny when it was subservient to the 
Crown, and a powerful barrier to tyranny when ranged in defence 
of the established rights of the nation. 

Among the political changes which had been brought 

The Stcitc 
about during the reign of the Tudors had been a revolt r , , 

from the government of the Church of Rome, resulting in 

the establishment of a new ecclesiastical organization (the Church 

of England) as a department of the state. Parljament had enacted 

laws to the effect (i) that the creed of this church should consist 

of "thirty-nine articles" (or statements of religious dogma), then 

first formulated; (2) that its supreme government should reside 

in the monarch, as chief executive; (3) that its worship should 

conform to a prescribed ritual, then first composed; (4) that its 

membership should include all the citizens of the state; and (5) that 

its property and revenues should be administered through the 

agency of the state. Adherence to this church and conform- f 

ity with its practice had been made universally compulsory. 

But this revolt under the Tudors had been merely one expression 

of a general spirit of independence that prevailed throughout the 

nation. Many Englishmen still adhered to the authority 

of the Roman Church, many disagreed with some of the f ^, e n . 

religious theories contained in the Thirty-nine Articles. senters •• 

Thus there arose a large body of disaffected people, who 

1 While thus engaged it was called the Court of High Commission. 



xviii MILTON. 

strove in one way or another against the State Church. One body 

(the Puritans) developed within the pale of the church, through 

the action of clergymen who, while accepting in the main the 

results of the recent revolt, wished to " purify " the doctrines of the 

church of what they considered to be errors, and to " purify " its 

worship of many rites and practices inherited from the Roman 

Catholic regime. These Puritans, the Catholics, and divers other 

persons of independent views, constituted a body of rebels against 

the authority of the state in religious matters; thus a group of 

sects (" Dissenters ") appears in England, suffering greatly from 

the persecutions of state officials, but recruiting their numbers 

steadily, especially from the ranks of the commoners. At first, 

most of the Puritans looked with favor upon a democratic 

re . s y~ form of church government, which had been evolved by 

terians. ° 

John Calvin, in Geneva, in which the churches, instead of 

being controlled by the state officials, would be united in a sort of 
federation, and governed by representative bodies, called " Presby- 
teries." Many others advocated extreme individualism in religion 

— the voluntary formation of single churches, wholly self- 
, controlled. Thus arose the two great Protestant dissenting 

sects of Presbyterians and Independents (known alike as 
" Non-conformists " to the ordinances of the state in religious 
matters), the latter of which ultimately attracted to itself the 
most aggressive Puritans, and gained an ascendency in public 
affairs. 1 

2. The Early Stuart Monarchs, i 603-1 649. 

The reign of the Tudors in England having come to an end by the 

death of Elizabeth, the " Virgin Queen," last of the direct line, the 

succession devolved upon Tames Stuart (Tames I. of Eng- 

To mpc T 

J land), the great-grandson of her father's sister Margaret, 
P rsonal w ^° ^ a d marr i e d the king of Scotland. Thus, between 
union of I ^°3 an< ^ I 7°7' tne same monarchs reigned over the king- 
England doms of England and of Scotland, although the kingdoms 
and were wholly distinct, each being governed according to its 
Scotland. own fundamental constitution through its own Parliament. 

1 See p. xx. 



MILTON. x i x 

A peculiarity of the early Stuart monarchs of England was 
their adherence to the doctrine of "the divine right of " Divine 
kings." This doctrine, in brief, was that an hereditary " ght " of 
monarchy is a divinely instituted form of government; that S ' 

a monarch is, therefore, responsible to God alone for the way in 
which he governs his realm ; and that, while he should aim to rule 
solely for the good of his subjects, they have no right to bid defiance 
to his edicts or to reject him when his government becomes ob- 
noxious to them.. 

Very early in his reign James showed his arbitrary temper by his 
determination, in spite of strong popular disapproval, to enforce 
the Act of Uniformity (see p. xvii) upon all Puritans and 
Catholics. This tyranny gave rise to the abortive Gunpowder Gun P ow - 
Plot to assassinate the king and the leaders of the State der Plot ' 
Church by blowing up the Houses of Parliament at the opening 
session on November 5, 1605, a day which has since been celebrated 
with rejoicings for the salvation of the monarch and the 
church. 

To his dogged insistence upon the theory of divine right 
the second Stuart monarch, Charles I., ultimately sacrificed T y rann y of 
his life. He quarrelled continuously with his Parliament in Charles L 
regard to the revenues and expenditures of the nation. He was 
compelled to summon Parliaments in order to procure money to 
carry out his schemes in regard to European politics, which involved 
wars with foreign nations ; but finding that each Parliament reso- 
lutely insisted upon securing a redress of wrongs inflicted by the 
monarch upon the nation, he dismissed two of these almost as soon 
as they were assembled. The third Parliament attempted to delimit 
the field of battle by presenting a statement of fundamental 
principles governing the relations of the king and the people, The 
called the Petition of Right, whose import can be expressed as Petition 
follows: "It is illegal for the king (1) to levy money arbi- Rlght * 
trarily; (2) to imprison arbitrarily; (3) to billet soldiers on citi- 
zens; (4) to apply martial law to civil cases." By ratifying this 
petition, Charles appeared to admit the claims of its authors ; but 
he continued to exact money illegally, and a new protest by Parlia- 
ment was followed by its dissolution. 



of 



xx MILTON. 

For eleven years the king governed without a Parliament, em- 
ploying such devices as the sale of monopolies, forced loans, 

and the levying of ship-money. This, which was theoretically 
money. , ,.,..,. , . 

the tax levied in times of war upon seaports for their own 

defence, was now levied upon every town in the kingdom in times 

of peace. John Hampden tested its legality by refusing to pay his 

tax of twenty shillings, but the courts decided against him. The 

attempt to procure an income through arbitrary taxation proving a 

failure, the king was forced again to summon a Parliament in 1640. 

This body speedily passed a bill depriving the king of his power 

of dissolving Parliament, and thus assured itself of a long tenure 

of power, that ultimately won for it the name of the Long 

Parliament Parliament " 

To these political causes of alienation between monarch 

and people the intensifying element of religious differences had not 
been wanting. Through his minister, Laud, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, Charles had endeavored to crush out Puritanism within the 
church, to increase in every way possible the features in which the 
English and the Roman churches stood on common ground, and to 
extend the domain of the Established Church over both his king- 
doms, to the utter rooting out of Presbyterianism. This last attempt 
alienated practically the entire Scotch nation from his cause, and led 
to their adoption of the famous " Solemn League and Covenant " 
to defend the Presbyterian religion. 

The king's repeated acts of tyranny finally provoked a civil 

Execu- W ar between the monarch, upheld by most of the nobility, 

Charles I anc * tne ^ ower House of Parliament. This House at first 

was dominated by members of the Presbyterian faith, but 

the Independents (see p. xviii), getting control of the army, expelled 

by force the Presbyterian members, and thereby' made possible a 

solution of the difficulties satisfactory to themselves. Having been 

condemned to death by a court especially created by the House of 

Commons to try him, the king was executed on the thirtieth of 

January, 1649. The monarchical and aristrocratic elernents were 

eliminated from the government and the popular representative 

body, the House of Commons, in its diminished form, assumed 

entire control of the nation. 



MILTON. xxi 

3. The Puritan Regime, 1649-1660. 

Oliver Cromwell, the most forceful character in the Com- 
mons and the army, speedily made his way to complete control q n 
of affairs through his masterly handling of the army in sup- 
pressing all uprisings of the adherents of the late king. The few fea- 
tures which remained operative from the former constitution 

were done away with, and after a disturbed period of govern- lr | s t rument 
_ . ,. „, „ .... . of Govern- 

ment by inefficient Parliaments, Cromwell arbitrarily assumed ment 

the direction of affairs, and a new written constitution, called 

the Instrument of Government, was adopted in 1653. Under this 

constitution the supreme executive power was vested in Cromwell 

under the title of Lord Protector. Four years later the value of his 

strong arm in holding the turbulent factors under control was so 

clearly recognized, that Parliament in the Humble Petition 

and Advice, recommending certain changes in the constitu- ^ um 

, , • • r ■,- , Petition 

tion, invited him to accept the title and dignity of King; but anc j Advice 

this he refused to do. 

The Puritan movement had rested upon two supports, 
popular indignation against the incorrigible absolutism of p ur j tan j sm 
Charles I., and the development of the army as a weapon of 
defence against this tyranny, — a weapon swayed by religious fanat- 
icism, and wielded and tempered by a leader who was a military 
genius and a master of men. The movement never comprised in 
its adherents the majority of the nation; the masses merely acqui- 
esced in it. Therefore, it could not survive the storm of indigna- 
tion that followed Charles's execution, the subsidence of the spirit 
of rebellion against monarchy now that its immediate provoking 
cause was removed, the reaction of hope that Charles's heir might 
not have inherited his political vices, and finally the death of 
Cromwell and the disintegration of his weapon, the army, through 
lack of use. 

Oliver Cromwell died September 3, 1658. His son and 

successor, Richard Cromwell, was no statesman, and the 

toration, 
turbulent and warring faction in the state gave him so much I ^ Q 

trouble, that he was soon glad to resign the reins of govern- 
ment. A war between different portions of the army was imminent, 



xxii MILTON. 

but Monk, general of the Scottish division, marched to London, 
called together a Parliament (giving it all the technical legality 
possible by summoning to it all the persons who had been legally 
elected to the last Parliament summoned by Charles L), and pro- 
cured the restoration of the feudal organization under the govern- 
ment of the legal heir to the throne (Charles II., son of the Charles 
who had been executed), and also the restoration of the Protestant 
religion as it had existed at the accession of Charles I. 

The character of the luxurious and dissolute court of 

Moials oi Charles II. Macaulay has sketched in a single paragraph 

Charles II ( see ^ 7^)* ^ ne literature of the period took its tone from 

the prevailing manners of the court. The first decade, it is 

true, gave to the world Milton's Paradise Lost. But the purity and 

elevation of his work is contrasted with a licentiousness and levity 

in the other writers of the period that even their brilliant talents, 

often approaching genius, cannot render tolerable. The greatest 

writer, and the only one whose works have continued to command 

the esteem of the public, was John Dryden, whose work 

Uiyden s comprised dramas, religious poems, translations, and satires 
Absalom . ,. . , , . , ... . . . 

, on the political and social conditions of the times. Absalom 

Ahitophel. and Ahitophel, the foremost of English satires, dealt with the 
Catholic agitation which then absorbed court and country. 
In this poem the names are borrowed from that instance in the 
history of Israel when Ahitophel aided Absalom, favorite son of 
David, King of Israel, to rebel against his father. Dryden depicted 
the Duke of Monmouth, Protestant candidate for the throne, as the 
favorite Absalom, and the Duke of Shaftesbury, head of the anti- 
Catholic incendiaries, as Ahitophel, defeated conspirator and traitor, 
driven by exposure to flight and speedy death (see p. xxiv). 



4. The Middle Stuart Monarchs, 1660-1688. 

At the restoration of the Stuarts, in 1660, an act of indemnity for 

offences committed during the late struggle was passed, but the 

regicides were especially exempted from its operation. The 

Policy of resentment against them went so far that in January, 1661, 

Charles II. eyen ^ t j ea j k 0( jies f Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshavv 



MILTON. xxiii 

were taken from their tombs and hung at Tyburn. This 
extreme reaction against democracy and the Puritan religion 
brought about a frantic zeal for the maintenance of the state 
religion. Laws were passed aiming to restrict officers in P „ 

municipal positions to adherents of the State Church; and ^^ 
the creed of that church was so rigidly enforced upon clergy- 
men and teachers in the universities that two thousand of their 
number were forced to give up their positions. These formed the 
nucleus of what became later a powerful body of Non-conformists. 
Anothercause conspired with the dread of repeating the disastrous 
experiment of Puritanism, to create this stringent defence of the 
integrity of the state religion, — the fear of a relapse to 

Catholicism. The king was secretly pledged to restore that ,. 

.11 Catholic 

religion in England whenever it was practicable. His brother a ~: tat : on 

James, Duke of York, prospective heir to the throne, was 

professedly a Catholic. As the first step toward the conversion of 

England, the king tried to purchase toleration for Catholicism by 

offering toleration of dissenters, who otherwise were forbidden to 

meet as congregations for religious worship in groups of more than 

five. Parliament not only compelled the king to withdraw his 

offer, but also decreed that all government officers as well as ,, 

, ' 1 est Act, 
municipal officers must be communicants in the State Church. 

This forced out of office the king's brother James, who was 

at the head of the navy, and many of the king's leading ministers 

resigned. 

Five years later a rascal named Titus Oates made public an . , 

alleged plot of the Catholics to murder the king, with the „ 

object of clearing a way for the immediate succession of 
James to the throne, and the subsequent reestablishment of the 
Catholic religion in England. The Earl of Shaftesbury, an unscru- 
pulous politician, who had lately lost the favor both of the king and 
of the champions of Protestantism, determined to recover his lost 
influence in the national councils by fomenting the terrors created 
by this revelation. Other persons were induced, by love of notoriety 
or by the large rewards offered for information, to corroborate and 
enlarge upon the statements made by Oates, and Shaftesbury suc- 
ceeded in convincing the nation that it had just escaped a Catholic 



V 



xxiv MILTON. 

revolution. Many peers, and even the queen herself, were implicated 

in these charges. Two thousand suspects were sent to prison ; guards 

controlled the streets of London. In the height of this excitement 

Parliament framed a bill to exclude Catholics from both Houses of 

Parliament. In the existing temper of the people, it was deemed 

wise that the Duke of York should withdraw from the king- 

„ " dom; and the panic could be allayed only by the introduction 

of a bill called the " Exclusion Bill," to exclude the Duke of 

York from the succession to the throne. But the testimony produced 

by Shaftesbury, at last exaggerated beyond the credulity of even so 

excited a populace, reacted against him; and the court party was 

able temporarily to check the passage of the bill, and later to drive 

Shaftesbury into exile. 

The failure of the exclusionists had been in part the result of their 
divided counsels; for most of their number had wished the suc- 
cession to devolve upon the Princess Mary, the oldest child 

of fames II., while Shaftesbury had determined that it should 
Monmouth. „ „ _ , _ ,, , .„ . . 

fall upon the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of 

Charles II., who posed as the champion of Protestantism, and 

claimed to be rightful heir to the throne by virtue of an alleged 

secret marriage between his mother and the king. To strengthen 

his cause, Shaftesbury had endeavored to marshal the country against 

the court, and had formed a committee to procure petitions to the 

king to assemble Parliament, for he believed that in the present 

temper of the nation that body would be subservient to his wishes. 

The Parliament thus summoned had been dissolved in a few 

„ ,. months, another Parliament being called to meet in Oxford, 

i^i 1*1 1 3 m f*n t 
6g ' aloof from the noise of the turbulent capital. Thither the 

king repaired, accompanied by a body of his guards. Shaftes- 
bury and his adherents also came to the meeting accompanied by 
troops. This partisan Parliament, ignoring all constitutional re- 
straints in their attacks on the court party, and rejecting all inter- 
mediate courses proposed by the moderates, had insisted on the 
absolute exclusion of James from the succession, and had attempted 
to revive the burned-out fires of the Popish Plot agitation; but the 
king, shrewdly relying on the excesses of the Parliament to justify 
his course to the nation, had dissolved it with its work still undone. 



MILTON. xxv 

This success of the court in its contest with Shaftesbury 
was in turn shaken by a new plot formed by the exclusionists. " R ^ e 
The plan provided for securing a Protestant sovereign by the p, l\. e 6g 
assassination of both Charles and James, as they passed a 
farm-house in Hertfordshire, called the Rye House, belonging to 
one of the conspirators, on their way from Newmarket to London; 
but their journey was delayed, the plot was subsequently betrayed, 
and the conspirators paid the penalty of their crime upon the 
scaffold. 

The failure of this plot and the odium which it brought 
upon the anti-court party (Whigs) removed for the time all Accessi °n 
opposition to the succession of the Duke of York. On the jt J ames 
death of Charles II. in 1685 his claim to the throne of Eng- 
land was undisputed, except by Monmouth, who attempted Execution 
to raise the west of England in the defence of his claims, but of Mon- 
was defeated at Sedgemoor, captured, and executed. mouth. 

The religious excitement continued unabated during the 
reign of James II. Matters reached a climax in 1688, three R / V °io tion 
years after James s accession to the throne. He attempted 
by an edict to abrogate laws against Catholicism which had » Declara- 
been passed to secure beyond all question the dominance of tion of 
the Protestant religion. This edict, illegal in itself, was made Liberty of 
more obnoxious to the clergy by an order directing them to ( ~'? n ~ 
read it in their several churches on a certain date. Thus science * 
they were compelled, as it seemed to them, to share in the • Trial of the 
overthrow of their own church. Seven of the Bishops of the Blsho P s - 
State Church ventured to petition the king not to enforce his order, 
and he, in a passion at this questioning of the royal prerogative, 
threw them into prison. The courts did not sustain him in his 
tyranny, but public sentiment was so outraged by his act that a 
group of seven ministers and statesmen determined to put an end to 
the struggle with the Stuarts by inviting the husband of James's 
elder daughter (who was stadtholder of the Dutch Republic) 
to interfere for the protection of the liberties of England. This 
man, William, Prince of Orange, landed in the west of England with 
a military expedition on November 5, 1688, and marched upon 
London, meeting with only a formal and faint-hearted resistance 



xxvi MILTON. 

from the people, who were alienated from James by repeated acts 
of tyranny. James fled to France, and William, since he could not 
legally summon a Parliament, issued writs for the election of a 
" Convention." This body declared that by virtue of recent events 
"the throne had thereby become vacant"; and by its authority, in 
February, 1689, the Prince of Orange was crowned as King William 
III., after having given his formal assent to a statement of the fun- 
damental principles of the English Monarchy, presented to 
Declaia- j lim ^ ^ conven ti n under the guidance of the body of 
Rights " Ministers who had assumed the direction of affairs. These 

statesmen were determined not only to endure no longer the 
tyranny of James Stuart, but also to secure such recognition of the 
fundamental rights which the Stuarts had persistently denied them 
as should leave no ground for further dispute with any monarch. 
The principles enunciated in this statement were afterward incor- 
porated into the series of laws which were enacted by Parliament 
under the name of the " Bill of Rights." The statement itself, called 
the " Declaration of Rights," is, next to " Magna Charta," the most 
important document in English history. The succession to the 

throne was now fixed by act of Parliament upon James's 
Act of 
c . younger daughter, Anne, and her heirs; these failing, it was 

to pass to the descendants of his cousin Sophia, who had 

married the Prince of the German State of Hanover. 



Chronological Table of the Notable Events referred to 
in the Essay on Milton. 



1603. 
1605. 
1608. 
1616. 
1618. 
1625. 
1629. 
1631. 

i632i 
1634. 

1637- 
1637. 
1638. 
1640. 
1642. 
1643. 



1649. 
1649. 
1651. 

1653- 

^657- 

1657. 
1660. 
1660. 
1660. 
1665. 
1667. 
1670. 
1671. 
1672. 

1673- 
1674. 
1678. 
1679. 
1681. 
1683. 
1685. 
1685. 
1688. 



1688. 
1688. 
1689. 



POLITICAL HISTORY. 

Accession of James I. 
Gunpowder Plot. 



Accession of Charles I. 
Cromwell's first speech in Pari. 



First " Ship Money " Writ. 



Long Parliament assembled. 
Outbreak of Civil War. 
Accession of Louis XIV. in 

France. 
Independents seize control of 

Parliament. 
Execution of Charles I. 
Establishment of the Common- 

[ WEALTH. 

Establishment of the Protecto- 
rate. 

The Hitmble Petition and Ad- 
vice. 

Death of Cromwell. Discord. 

Restoration of Charles II. 

Corporation Act. 

Act of Uniformity. 



Secret treaty, 



Test Act. 



Charles II. and 
[Louis XIV. 



Popish Plot. 

Exclusion Bill. 

Oxford Parliament. 

Rye House Plot. 

Accession of James II. 

Monmouth's rebellion. 

April, Declaration for Liberty 

May, [of Conscience. 

June, Trial of the Bishops. 

June, Invitation to William of 
Orange. 

November, Landing of William. 

December, Flight of James II. 

February, Accession of William 
III. and Mary under the 
Declaration of Rights. 

December, Bill of Rights. 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



Milton b., December 9. 
Shakespeare d. 
Cowley b. Moliere b. 
Milton enters Cambridge University. 
Milton writes Ode on the Nativity. 
Dryden b. 

Milton writes L' Allegro, II Penseroso. 
Milton writes Comus. 
Milton writes Lycidas. 
Ben Jonson d. 

Milton travels on the Continent. 
Milton, settled in London, defends, in 
[pamphlets, the rights of the people. 



Milton becomes Latin Secretary, and 
[continues his pamphlets. 
Milton writes the Defensio. 



Milton begins Paradise Lost. 



Milton finishes Paradise Lost. 

Cowley d. Swift b. 

Congreve b. 

Milton writes Paradise Regained and 

Addison b. [Samson Agonistes. 

Milton d. 



Pope b. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

MACAULAY. 

Chiefly Biographical. 
Life of Macaulay. 

i. By G. O. Trevelyan. (2 vols., Harpers.) 

2. By J. Cotter Morison. English Men of Letters Series. 

(Harpers.) 

3. By C. H. Jones. (Appleton.) 
Chiefly Critical. 

Essays on Macaulay's Literary Work. 

1. By Walter Bagehot. In Literary Studies, Vol. II. 

2. By Leslie Stephen. In Hours in a Library, Vol. III. 

3. By Matthew Arnold. In Mixed Essays. 
General Criticism. 

In Minto's Manual of English Prose, pp. 87-130; Taine's History 
of English Literature, III., pp. 256-294; and Clark's A Study 
of English Prose Writers, pp. 420-454. 

MILTON. 

Chiefly Biographical. 
Life of Milton. 

1. By David Masson. (6 vols., Macmillan.) 

2. By Mark Pattison. English Men of Letters Series. (Har- 

pers.) 

3. By Richard Garnett. (Scribner.) 

4. By Stopford A. Brooke. Classical Writers Series. (Ap- 

pleton.) 
Chiefly Critical. 
Essays on Milton. 

1. By Matthew Arnold. I n Es says in Criticism, Second Series. 

2. By Walter Bagehot. In Literary Studies, Vol. I. 

3. By Edward Dowden. In Transcripts and Studies. 

4. By Jamas Russell Lowell. In Among my Books or Prose 

Works, Vol. IV. 

xxviii 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. xxix 

DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF MILTON'S WORKS MENTIONED 
IN THIS ESSAY. 

L Allegro (about 1632) is a poem in 152 lines of iambic tetrameter, 
describing the varied pleasures of a single day as they would pre- 
sent themselves to the mind of a man in an Open, merry-hearted 
mood. 

// Penseroso (about 1632) is a companion poem in the same form, 
describing in rather more detail the pleasures that present them- 
selves to the contemplative, serious-minded man, during the same 
period of time. 

Cotnus (1634) is a masque, treating of the escape of a lady from the trap 
set for her by an enchanter, Comus ; an escape made possible through 
her strength of character and her faith in God. It was composed for 
the Earl of Bridgewater, and was played at Ludlow Castle, Wales, 
at Michaelmas time, 1634. 

Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus 
(1641) was an attack upon the High-Church party, who were 
battling against Puritanism. Their champion, Bishop Hall, is the 
" Remonstrant " referred to, he having issued a pamphlet called 
Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament. To this 
five Puritan divines had replied in the pamphlet Smectymnuus, and 
Hall had issued a rejoinder. Milton's pamphlet, although powerful, 
was outdone by another from his pen a few months later, 

The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty (1641), 
although both presented with extraordinary force the arguments of 
the Puritans against the extension of the Episcopal form of church 
government. 

The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Restored, to the good of both 
Sexes (1643). 

The Judgment of Martin Bucee concerning Divorce (1644). 

Tetrachordon ( 1 644) . 

Colasterion (1644). 

These four books treat of the principles of marriage and divorce as 
formulated by Milton from his own interpretation of the Scriptures. 
This was, in brief, that the conception of marriage as a sacrament 
was an invention of the priesthood, having no sanction in Scripture 
or reason ; and that, therefore, divorce should be the remedy for any 
incompatibility of temper that might develop between husband and 
wife. The action of the authorities in regard to his first pamphlet 
on divorce led to the publication of his 

Areopagitica, A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed 
Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644), "the most popular 



xxx BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

and eloquent, if not the greatest, of all Milton's prose writings." It 
attacked the " censorship " system, which required all books to be 
licensed by one of the official censors, and to be registered in the 
books of the Stationers' Company. Milton, by his neglect of these 
technicalities in the first pamphlet, had laid himself open to attack, 
but he sturdily refused to have the Areopagitica either licensed or 
registered. 

Eikonoclastes was a pamphlet written to neutralize the effect on the 
popular mind of a work called Eikon Basilike, which had lately 
appeared and won extensive circulation. The title (meaning " Royal 
Image ") indicates its nature. Although purporting to be a chronicle 
written by Charles I., detailing his sufferings at the hands of his 
rebellious people, it was really a spurious document, composed by 
enthusiastic Jacobites; and Milton's pamphlet was intended to 
destroy the favorable conception of the king which the Eikon was 
designed to create. The Jacobites renewed the combat by engaging 
the noted scholar Salmasius, of Leyden, to produce in Latin a 
Defencio Regia pro Carolo I., and Milton was deputed to reply to 
this in his 

Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1651), a book whose exposition of the 
cause of the Parliament proved a bulwark of defence against the 
Jacobite agitation. The Jacobites once more appealed to the public 
with their Regli Sanguinis Clamor ad Ccelum adversus Parricidas 
Angllcanos, and again Milton responded with his 

Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (1654). 

No other works of importance appeared before the publication of his 

Paradise Lost (1667), the character of which is sufficiently indicated in 
this Essay. The supplementary work, 

Paradise Regained (1671), treats of the temptation of Christ- during his 
forty days' fast in the wilderness. The theme proved difficult to treat 
because of the lack of action in the experiences described, the heroism 
displayed being exhibited in winning spiritual rather than physical 
victories, and most of the movement occurring in scenes introduced 
as visions, not as actual occurrences. The same year with this 
volume appeared 

Samson Agonistes (1671), a dramatic ode founded on the captivity of 
the Hebrew Samson, and his triumph over his enemies in the hour 
of death. The only posthumous work of any importance is the 

De Doctrina Christiana, written late in his life, and sufficiently described 
in the opening paragraphs of this Essay. 



ESSAY ON MILTON. 

{Edinburgh Review, August, 1825.) 

Joannis Miltojii, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi. 
A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy 
Scriptures alone. By John Milton, translated from the 
Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., &c. &c. 1825. 

1. Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, 
deputy-keeper of the state papers, in the course of his 

-researches among the presses of his office, met with a Milton 
a large Latin manuscript. With it were found cor- Ms - 

5 rected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, 
while he filled the office of Secretary, 1 and several papers 
relating to the Popish Trials 2 and the Rye-house Plot. 3 
The whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed 
To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On examination, the large 

10 manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doc- 
trines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and 
Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, 4 and de- 
posited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, 
held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. 

15 It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that 
he may have fallen under the suspicions of the govern- 
ment during that persecution of the Whigs which fol- 
1 p. xxvii. 2 p. xxiii. 3 p. xxv. 4 p. xxi. 



2 MILTON. 

lowed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, 1 and 
that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, 
this work may have been brought to the office in which 
it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 
manuscript may have been, 2 no doubt can exist that it is 5 
a genuine relic of the great poet. 

2. Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty 
to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself 

its transla- °^ ms tas ^ * n a manner honourable to his talents 
tion into and to his character. His version is not indeed 10 
English. yer y eag y or e i e g ant . b ut . j t i s entitled to the praise 

of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with inter- 
esting quotations, and have the rare merit of really eluci- 
dating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a 
sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opin- 15 
ions, and tolerant towards those of others. 

3. The book itself will not add much to the fame 
of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written, 

though not exactly in the style of the prize essays 
of Oxford and Cambridge. ^There is no elaborate 20 
imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none 
-~©f the ceremonial cleanness which characterises the dic- 
tion of our academical Pharisees. 2 The author does not 
attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the 
Ciceronian ° gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, 25 
sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The 
nature of his subject compelled him to use many words 
" That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 3 

1 p. xxiv. 2 Note, p. 73. 

3 See Milton's Minor Poems (Heath), Sonnet VI., 



MILTON. 3 

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin 
were his mother tongue ; and where he is least happy, 
his failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a 
native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We 

5 may apply to him what Denham ° with great felicity 
says of Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes 
of the ancients. 1 

4-r-3 , hroughout the volume are discernible the traces 
of a powerful and independent mind, emancipated from 

io the influence of authority, and devoted to the 
search of truth. Milton professes to form his system 
from the Bible alone ; and his digest of scriptural texts is 
certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is 
not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. 

15 »^£. Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows 
seem to have excited considerable amazement, particu- 
larly his Arianism, and his theory on the subject i ts here- 
of polygamy. 1 Yet we can scarcely conceive that sies - 
any person could have read the Paradise Lost without 

20 suspecting him of the former ; nor do we think that any 

reader, acquainted with the historyof his life, ought to 

be much startled at the latter. y*fne opinions which he 

?' yfias' expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the 

'eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, 1 

25 might, we think, have caused more just surprise. 

6. But we will not go into the discussion of these 
points. The book, were it far more orthodox or Its obso _ 
far more heretical than it is, would not much edify lete char- 
or corrupt the present generation. The men of acter ' 

30 our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos. 
1 Note, p. 73. 



4 MILTON. 

A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio 
Popidi 1 to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The 
name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances 
attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree 
of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few 5 
minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns 
in every magazine ; and it will then, to borrow the elegant 
language of the play-bills, be withdrawn, to make room 
for the forthcoming novelties. 

7. We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, 10 
transient as it may be, which this work has excited, ^he 

its relation dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on 
to this the life and miracles of a saint, till they have awak- . 

essay. ened the devotional feelings of their auditors by 

exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment, a 15 
lock of his hair, or a drop of his bloqdJ On the same prin- 
ciple, we intend to take advantage of the late interesting 
discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good 
man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his 
moral and intellectual qualities. (Nor, we are convinced, 20 
will the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion 
like the present, we turn for a short time from the topics 
of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, 
the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the states- 
man, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the 25 
champion and the martyr of English liberty. 

8. It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and 
it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. , By the 
general suffrage of the civilised world, his place has 

1 Index, " Salmasius." 



MILTON. 5 

been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. 
His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been 
silenced. There are many critics, and some of great 
name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the 

Milton s 

5 poems and to decry the poet. The works they fame rests 
acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be onhi s 
classed among the noblest productions of the poe ry ' 
human mind. 'VCut they will not allow the author to rank 
with those great men who, born in the infancy of civili- 

idsation, supplied, by their own powers, the want of iiip^^^ 

v struction, and, though destitute of models themselves, 

! b eque athed to posterity models which defy imitation. 

Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created ; 

he lived in an enlightened age ; he received a finished 

15 education ; and we must therefore, if we would form a 
just estimate of his powers, make large deductions in 
consideration of these advantages. , 

9. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as 
the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to 

20 struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than 

His poetry 

Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, notaprod- 
whether he had not been born "an age too late."" uctofthe 
For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him 
the butt of much clumsy ridicule. 1 The poet, we believe, 

25 understood the nature of his art better than the critic. 
He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage 
from the civilisation which surrounded him, or from the 
learning which he had acquired ; and he looked back 
with something like regret to the ruder age of simple 

30 words and vivid impressions. 

1 Note, p. 74. 



6 MILTON. 

10. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry 
almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fer- 
vently admire those great works of imagination which 
(Theses.) have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire 
i. Civiiiza- them the more because they have appeared in 5 
tagonistic" dark a g es - On the contrary, we hold that the most 
to poetry, wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great 
poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot under- 
stand why those who believe in that most orthodox article 
of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the 10 
best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the excep- 
tion. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates 
a corresponding uniformity in the cause. 

ii. The fact is, that common observers reason from 
the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the 15 

imitative arts. The improvement of the former 
2. Science 
accompa- * s gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting 

nies civili- materials, ages more in separating and combining 
them. Even when a system has been formed, 
there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every 20 
generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed 
to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented 
by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, 
therefore, the first speculators lie under great disad- 
vantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. 25 
Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily 
surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has 
read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy 
could teach Montague l or Walpole many lessons in 
finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely 30 

1 Index, " Halifax." 



MILTON. 7 

applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn 
more than the great Newton knew after half a century of 
study and meditation. 

12. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or 
5 with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The 

progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts 

with better objects of imitation. It may indeed dine as 

improve the instruments which are necessary to Clvlllzatl °n 
. . . r , . . , advances, 

the mechanical operations of the musician, the 

io sculptor, and the painter^But language, the machine of 

the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. 

Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. 

They advance from particular images to general terms. 

Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philo- 
15 sophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical. 

13. This change in the language of men is partly the 
cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in 
the nature of their intellectual operations, of a (Demon- 
change by which science gains and poetry loses, stration.) 

20 Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of J^^^ 
knowledge, but particularity is indispensable to the # general- 
creations of the imagination. In proportion as lzatlon - 
men know more and think more, they look less at indi- 
viduals and more at classes. They therefore make better 

25 theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases 
instead of images, and personified qualities instead of 
men. They may be better able to analyse human nature 
than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business 
of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He 

30 may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury ; he may 
refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius ; or 



8 MILTON. 

he may never think about the matter at all. His creed 
on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly 
so called, than the notions which a painter may have \ 
conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, or the ciKi> 
culation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niohe/ 5 
or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written 
a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no 
means certain that it would have been a good one. It is 
extremely improbable that it would have contained half 
so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found 10 
in the Fable of the Bees.° But could Mandeville have 
created an Iago ?" \Vell as he knew how to resolve char- 
acters into their elements, would he have been able to 
combine those elements in such a manner as to make up 
a man, a real, living, individual man? 15 

X4? Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even 
enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if 
Poetr an- an y tnm g which gives so much pleasure ought to 
tithetical be called unsoundness. .> By poetry we mean not 
to reason. a jj wr jti n g in verse, nor even all good writing 20 
in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical com- 
positions which, on other grounds, deserve the high- 
est praise. /§y poetry we mean the art of employing 
words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on. the 
imagination, the art of doing by means of Words what the 25 
painter does by means of colours^ 7 Thus the greatest of 
poets has described it, in lines universally admired for 
the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more 
valuable on account of the just notion which they convey 
of the art in which he excelled : 3° 



MILTON. 

" As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." * 



5 15. These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which he 
ascribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a 
frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but p oetry 
it is the truth of madnessy The reasonings are just ; demands 
but the premises are falser After the first supposi- cre u 1 y ' 

10 tions have been made, everything ought to be consistent ; 
but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity 
which almost amounts to a partial and temporary de- 
rangement of the intellect. Hence of all people children 
are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves 

15 without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is 
strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them 
the effect of reality. (No man, whatever his sensibility 
may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear,° as a little 
girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. 

20 She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, 
that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of 
her knowledge she believes ; she weeps ; she trembles ; 
she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel 
the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the 

25 despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. 
16. In a rude state of society men are children 
with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in sion!) C "po- 
such a state of society that we may expect to find etry flour- 
the poetical temperament in its highest perfection, primitive 

30 In an enlightened age there will be much intelli- society. 



Midsummer Nighfs Dream, V. 



io MILTON. 

gence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just 
classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and 
eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones ; 
but little poetry. Men will judge and compare ; but 
they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, 5 
and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy 
them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the 
effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, 
the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The 
Greek Rhap^odists, according to Plato, could scarce to 
recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The 
Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he shouts 
his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of 
Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems 
to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are 15 
very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among 
those who participate most in its improvements. They 
linger longest among the peasantry. 

1 7. Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, 

as a magic-lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the 20 

body. And, as the magic-lantern acts best in a 
(Thesis.) n / ' rr & . 

Poetry re- dark room, poetry effects its purpose most com- 

lies upon pletely in a dark age. (£s the light of knowledge 
breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of 
certainty become more and more definite and the shades 25 
of probability more and more distinct, the hues and linea- 
ments of the phantoms which it calls up grow fainter and 
fainter^ We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of 
reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and 
the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 30 

18. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, 



MILTON. ii 

aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. 

He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He 

must unlearn much of that knowledge which has per- 

■ haps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. (Appiica- 

c His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His t i lon -) Clv ' 

■> J . lhzation 

difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in destroys 
the pursuits which are fashionable among his con -illusion. 
temporaries ; and that proficiency will in general be pro- 
portioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it 

10 is well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works 
do not resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We 
have seen in our own time great talents, intense labour, 
and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the 
spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely 

15 in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. 
19. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever 
triumphed over greater difficulties v than Milton. He 
received a learned education : he was a profound Milton's 
and elegant classical scholar : he had studied all the culture. 

20 mysteries of Rabbinical literature: he was intimately 
acquainted with every language of modern Europe,, from 
which either pleasure or information was then to be 
derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later 
times who has been distinguished by the excellence of 

25 his Latin verse. The genius of Petraxck ° was scarcely of 
the first order ; and his poems in the ancient language, 
though much praised by those who have never read 
them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his 
admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination : nor 

30 indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to 
that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is against us 



12 MILTON. 

on this point. 1 But Johnson had studied the bad writers 
of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible 
to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to 
judge between two Latin styles as a habitual drunkard 
to set up for a wine-taster. 5 

20. Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a 
far-fetched, costly, sickly, imitation of that which else- 
„. . where may be found in healthful and spontaneous 

umph perfection. The soils on which this rarity flour- 

over con- i s h es are m general as ill suited to the production 10 

ditions, in ° r 

the Latin of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a 
poems. hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author 

of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle 
to Manso was truly wonderful. " Never before were 
such marked originality and such exquisite mimicry 15 
found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of Mil- 
ton the artificial manner indispensable to such works is 
admirably preserved, while, at the same time, his genius 
gives to them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and 
freedom, which distinguishes them from all other writ- 20 
ings of the same class. They remind us of the amuse- 
ments of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort 
of Gabriel : . 

" About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads 2 5 

Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear, 
Hung high, with diamond naming and with gold." * 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which 
the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a 

1 Note, p. 74. * Paradise Lost, IV. 551—554. 



MILTON. 13 

glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is 
accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination 
triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent 
was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffo- 
5 cated beneath the weight of its fuel, but penetrated 
the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and 
radiance. 

21. It is not our intention to attempt anything like a 
complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The 

10 public has long been agreed as to the merit of the Im 
most remarkable passages, the incomparable har- tanceofhis 
mony of the numbers, and the excellence of that work * 
style which no rival has been able to equal, and no 
parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest per- 

15 fection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and' 
to which every ancient and every modern language has 
contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. 
In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, 
innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet 

20 the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a 
straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. 

22. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of 
Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by 
means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is „• 

* rilS 

25 produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by literary 
what it suggests ; not so much by the ideas which method - 

""St directly conveys, as by other ideas which are con- 
nected with them. He electrifies the mind through con- 
ductors. The most unimaginative man must understand 

30 the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires 



14 MILTON. 

from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, 
and sets the images in so clear a light, that it is impos- 
sible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot 
be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the 
reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not 5 
paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive lis- 
tener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the out- 
line. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to 
make out the melody. 

23. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 10 
The expression in general means nothing; but, applied 

Its effec- to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. 

tiveness. jjj s poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies 
less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. 
There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his 15 
words than in other words. But they are words of en- 
chantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the 
past is present and the distant near. New forms of 
beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial- 
places of the memory give up their dead. Change the 2 ° 
structure of the sentence ; substitute one synonyme for 
another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell 
loses its power ; and he who should then hope to conjure 
with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim inf 
the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, " Open Wheat," 25 
"Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no soundBut 
"Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden 1 in 
his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts 
of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of 
this. 30 

1 Index, " Dryden," end. 



MILTON. . 15 

24. In support of these observations we may remark, 
that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are 
more generally known or more frequently repeated „ 

. 1 j 1 Corrobora- 

than those which are little more than muster-rolls tion of 
5 of names. 1 They are not always more appropriate above ' 
or more melodious than other names. But they are 
charmed names. Every one of them is the first link in a 
long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place 
of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our 

10 country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us 
an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. 
One transports us back to a remote period of history. 
Another places us among the novel scenes and manners 
of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical 

15 recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared 
Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings be- 
fore us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the 
trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint de- 
vices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the 

20 achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of 
rescued princesses. 

25. In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar 
manner more happily displayed than in the- Allegro and 
the Penseroso. 1 It is impossible to conceive that u Allegro 

25 the mechanism of language can be brought to a and // 
more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems Penseroso - 
differ from others as attar of roses differs from ordinary 
rose water, the close-packed essence from the thin diluted 
mixture. They are indeed not so much poems, as col- 

30 lections of hints, from each of which the reader is to 
1 See Paradise Lost, I. 576-587 ; II. 659-667. 



16 MILTON. 

make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text 
for a stanza. 

26. The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works 
which, though of very different merit, offer some marked 

Comus and points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in 5 
Samson t h e f orm f pi avs . There are perhaps no two kinds 
as lyric ' °f composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama 
dramas. anc j t ne ode. The business of the dramatist is to 
keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but 
his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his per- 10 
sonal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as 
unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the 
voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. 
Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron were his least ' 
successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard 15 
pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. New- 
berry, in which a single moveable head goes round 
twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks 
out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, 
the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the 20 
characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the 
frown and sneer of Harold 1 were discernible in an in- 
stant. But -this species of egotism, though fatal to the 
drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the 
lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his 20 
own emotions. 

27. Between these hostile elements many great men 
have endeavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never 
with complete success. The Greek Drama, on the model 
of which the Samson was written, 2 sprang from the Ode. 3° 

1 Index, " Byron." 2 Note, p. 74. 



MILTON. 17 

The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally 
partook of its character. The genius of the greatest 
of the Athenian dramatists co-operated with the The Greek 
circumstances under which tragedy made its first prototypes 

5 appearance. ^schylus was, head and heart, a °^ the Sam ' 
lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far more in- 
tercourse with the East than in the days of Homer ; and 
they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in 
war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following 

10 generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. 
From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that 
they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to 
Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was 
natural that the literature of Greece should be tinctured 

15 with the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is 
discernible in the works of Pindar and ^schylus. The 
latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The 
book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a 
considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. ,'Con- 

20 sidered as plays, his works are absurd ; considered as 
choruses, they are above all praise^ ^If, for instance, we 
examine the address of Clytemn estra to A gamemnon on 
his return, or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, 1 
by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly 

25 condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the 
characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit 
that it has never been surpassed in energy and magnifi- 
cence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic 
as was consistent with its original form. His portraits of 

30 men have a sort of similarity ; but it is the similarity not 
1 Index, " yEschylus." 



18 MILTON. 

of a painting, but of a bas-relief, i It suggests a resem- 
blance ; but it does not produce an illusion^ Euripides 
attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task 
far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. In- 
stead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was 5 
excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad ser- 
mons for good odes. 

28. Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, 
much more highly tljan, in our opinion, Euripides de- 
Its limita- served. Indeed the caresses which this partiality 10 
tions. leads our countryman to bestow on " sad Electra's 1 

poet," 2 sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of 
Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events, 
there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athe- 
nian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson 15 
Agonistes. Had Milton taken /Eschylus for his model, 
he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, 
and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, 
without bestowing a thought on those dramatic pro- 
prieties which the nature of the work rendered it impos- 20 
sible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile. things in 
their own nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every one 
else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with 
the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify 
ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflict- 25 
ing ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutral- 
ize each other. We are by no means insensible to the 
merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of 
the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the open- 

1 Index, " Euripides." 

2 See Milton's Minor Poems (Heath), Sonnet III. 



MILTON. 19 

ing speech, or the- wild and barbaric melody which gives 
so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think 
it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of 
Milton. 

5 29. The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian 
Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the 
Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest per- command 
formance of .the kind which exists in any language. the Italian 
It is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as 

10 the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta 
to the Pastor Fido.° It was well for Milton that he had 
here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and 
loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel 
for it the same veneration which he entertained for the 

15 remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by 
so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, 
moreover, of his Italian predecessors .were of a kind to 
which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop 
to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style ; but false 

20 brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objec- 
tion to a russet attire ; but she turned with disgust from 
the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the 
rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever orna- 
ments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to 

25 the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the 
crucible. 

30. Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction 
which he neglected in the Samson. He made his Lyr ic eie- 
Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and ments of 

30 dramatic only in semblance. He has not attempted 
a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature 



20 MILTON. 

of that species of composition ; and he has therefore 
succeeded, wherever success was not impossible. The 
speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies; and he 
who so reads them will be enraptured with their elo- 
quence, their sublimity, and their music. The inter- 5 
ruptions of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint 
upon the writer, and break the illusion of the reader. 
The finest passages are those which are lyric in form as 
well as in spirit. " I should much commend," says the 
excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, " the 10 
tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a cer- 
tain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, 
I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet nothing 
parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It 
is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, 15 
when he is discharged from the labour of uniting two 
incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his 
choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above 
himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from 
the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth 20 
in celestial freedom and beauty 1 ; he seems to cry 
exultingly, 

" Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly or I can run," 2 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe 25 
in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the 
balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky wings 
of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the 
Hesperides. 

1 Note, p. 74. 2 Comus, 1012, 1013. 



MILTON. 21 

31. There are several of the minor poems of Milton 
on which we would willingly make a few remarks. Still 
more willingly would we enter into a detailed ex- Paradise 
amination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Rc ^ ained - 

5 Regained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever men- 
tioned except as an instance of the blindness of the 
parental affection which men of letters bear towards the 
offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken 
in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise 

10 Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure that the supe- 
riority of the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is 
not more decided, than the superiority of the Paradise 
Regained to every poem which has since made its 
appearance. But our limits prevent us from discussing 

15 the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary 
production which the general suffrage of critics has 
placed in the highest class of human compositions. 

32. The only poem of modern times which can be 
compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. 

20 The subject of Milton, in some points, resembled p arac u se 
that of Dante ; but he has treated it in a widely Lost 
different manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate 
our opinion respecting our own great poet, than by con- 
trasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. 

25 33. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, 
as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the _ 

J l oj l Dante and 

picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Milton; 
Dante employs speak for themselves ; they stand contrasts 
simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a W ork. 
30 signification which is often discernible only to r - Similes - 
the initiated. Their value depends less on what they 



22 MILTON. 

directly represent than on what they remotely suggest. 
However strange, however grotesque, may be the appear- 
ance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never 
shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the 
colour, the sound, the smell, the taste ; he counts the 5 
numbers ; he measures the size. His similes are 
the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of other 
poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in 
a plain, business-like manner ; not for the sake of any 
beauty in the objects from which they are drawn ; not 10 
for the sake of any ornament which they may impart 
to the poem ; but simply in order to make the meaning 
of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. 
The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to 
the seventh circle of hell 1 were like those of the rock 15 
which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The 
cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at 
the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the 
heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the 
vast cemetery of Aries. 20 

34. Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante 
the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few ex- 
amples. The English poet has never thought of 
2. Details. ta k m g- t h e - measure of Satan. He gives us merely 
a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies 25 
stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal 
in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the 
sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. 2 
When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian 
angels, he stands like TenerirTe or Atlas : his stature 30 
1 Note, pp. 75, 76. 2 Note, p. 77. 



MILTON. 23 

reaches the sky. 1 Contrast with these descriptions the 
lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre 
of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as 
broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome ; and his other 

5 limbs were in proportion ; so that the bank, which con- 
cealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed 
so much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain 
have attempted to reach to his hair." 2 We are sensible 
that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Floren- 

10 tine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand ; 
and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate 
our meaning. 

35 . Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh 
book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Male- 

i5bolge in Dante. 2 Milton avoids the loathsome de- ni us tration 
tails, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and of ( 2 )- 
tremendous imagery, Despair hurrying from couch to 
couch to mock the wretches with his attendance ; 
Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of sup- 

20 plications, delaying to strike. What says Dante ? " There 
was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick 
who, between July and September, are in the hospitals 
of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sar- 
dinia, were in one pit together ; and such a stench was 

25 issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs." 

36. We will not take upon ourselves the invidious 
office of settling precedency between two such writers. 
Each in his own department is incomparable ; and 3 personal 
each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, narration. 

30 taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent 
1 Note, p. 77. 2 Note, p. 78. 



24 MILTON. 

to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a 
personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-wit- 
ness of. that which he relates. He is the very man who 
has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second 
death, 1 who has read the dusky characters on the portal 5 
within which there is no hope, 1 who has hidden his face 
from the terrors of the Gorgon, 1 who has fled from the 
hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghi- 
gnazzo. 1 His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides 
of Lucifer. 1 His own feet have climbed the mountain of 10 
expiation. 1 His own brow has been marked by the puri- 
fying angel. 1 The reader would throw aside such a tale 
in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the 
strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its 
horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in 15 
its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs 
from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ 
from those of Gulliver. 2 The author of Amadis would 
have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those 
minute particulars which give such a charm to the work 20 
of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy 
about names, the official documents transcribed at full 
length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the 
court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. 
We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, 25 
nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we 
can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the ro- 
mance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, now actually 
resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, 
flying islands, and philosophising horses, nothing but such 30 
1 Note, pp. 78, 79. 2 Index, "Swift." 

V 



MILTON. 25 

circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment 
a deception on the imagination. 

37. Of all the poets who have introduced into their 
works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has suc- 

5 ceeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him : The 
and as this is a point on which many rash and ill- Super- 
considered judgments have been pronounced, we 
feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The most 
fatal error which a poet can possibly commit in the 

10 management of his machinery, is that of attempting to 
philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured 
for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits 
must be incapable. But these objections, though sanc- 
tioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, 

15 in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. 

38. What is spirit? What are our own minds, the 

portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We 

observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain , 

1 Its expres- 

them into material causes. We therefore infer that S ion neces- 

20 there exists something which is not material. But sanl y b y 

symbols. 

of this something we have no idea. We can define 
it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by 
symbols. We use the word ; but we have no image of 
the thing ; and the business of poetry is with images, and 

25 not with words. The poet uses words indeed ; but they 
are merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. 
They are the materials which he is to dispose in such a 
manner as to present a picture to the mental eye. And 
if they are not so disposed, they are no more entitled to 

30 be called poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of 
colours to be called a painting. 



26 MILTON. 

39. Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the 
great mass of men must have images. The strong ten- 
Proof from dency of the multitude in all ages and nations to 
religion. idolatry can be explained on no other principle. 
The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, 5 
worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity of 
having something more definite to adore produced, in a 
few centuries, the innumerable crowd of Gods and God- 
desses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it 
impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. 10 
Yet even these transferred to the Sun the worship which, 
in speculation, they considered due only to the Supreme 
Mind. The History of the Jews is the record of a con- 
tinued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the 
most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating de- 15 
sire of having some visible and tangible object of ado- 
ration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which 
Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Chris- 
tianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely 
ever acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than 20 
this feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, 
the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philosopher 
might admire so noble a conception : but the crowd 
turned away in disgust from words which presented no 
image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in 25 
a human form, walking among men, partaking of their 
infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their 
graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, 
that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of 
the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces 30 
of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were hum- 



MILTON. 27 

bled in the dust. 1 Soon after Christianity had achieved 
its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to 
corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints 
assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took 

5 the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for 
the loss of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and 
Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The fas- 
cination of. sex and loveliness was again joined to that of 
celestial dignity ; and the homage of chivalry was blended 

10 with that of religion. Reformers have often made a stand 
against these feelings ; but never with more than apparent 
and partial success. The men who demolished the images 
in Cathedrals have not always been able to demolish 
those which were enshrined in their minds. It would 

15 not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule 
holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be 
embodied before they can excite a strong public feeling. 
The multitude is more easily interested for the most un- 
meaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for 

20 the most important principle. 

40. From these considerations., we infer that no poet, 
who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the 
want of which Milton has been blamed, would p roo f f rom 
escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there P oe tjy. 

25 was another extreme which, though far less dangerous, 
was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are 
in a great measure under the control of their opinions. 
The most exquisite art of poetical colouring can produce 
no illusion, when it is employed to represent that which 

30 is at once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. 
1 Note, p. 79. 



28 MILTON. 

Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. 
It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giving 
such a shock to their understandings as might break the 
charm which it was his object to throw over their imagi- 
nations. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness 5 
and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. 
Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely neces- 
sary that the spirits should be clothed with material forms. 
"But," says he, "the poet should have secured the con- 
sistency of his system by keeping immateriality out ofio 
sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his 
thoughts." This is easily said ; but what if Milton could 
not seduce his readers to drop immateriality from their 
thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so 
full a possession of the minds of men as to leave no room 15 
even for the half belief which poetry requires ? Such we 
suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the 
poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial 
system. He therefore took his stand on the debatable 
ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has 20 
doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge 
of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the 
wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in 
the right. This task, which almost any other writer 
would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The 25 
peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his 
meaning circuitously through a long succession of asso- 
ciated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, 
enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he 
could not avoid. 30 

41. Poetry which relates to the beings of another 



MILTON. 29 

world ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. 
That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque 
indeed beyond any that ever was written. Its e ^ m Dante' 
effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or devils. 
5 the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of 
all mystery. This is a fault on the right side, a fault 
inseparable from the plan of Dante's poem, which, as 
we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy 
of description necessary. Still it is a fault. The super- 

10 natural agents excite an interest ; but it is not the interest 
which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we 
could talk to the ghosts and daemons without any emotion 
of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan,° ask them 
to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's 

15 angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful 
ugly executioners. His dead men are merely living men 
in strange situations. The scene which passes between 
the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. 1 Still, Farinata 
in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have 

20 been at an auto dafe.° Nothing can be more touching 
than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what 
is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere 
composure, the lover for whose affection she is grateful, 
but whose vices she reprobates? The feelings which give 

25 the passage its charm would suit the streets of Florence 
as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory. 1 

42. The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all 
other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful 
creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. Milton's 

30 They are not wicked men. They are not ugly devils. 
1 Note, p. 80. * 



30 MILTON. 

beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee- 
faw-fum of Tasso° and Klopstock. They have just 
enough in common with human nature to be intelligible 
to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, 
marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, 5 
but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in 
mysterious gloom. 

43. Perhaps the gods and demons of ^Eschylus may 
best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of 
/Eschy- Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we 10 
lus's devils. h ave remarked, something of the Oriental char- 
acter ; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his 
mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance 
which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. 
All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of 15 
vEschylus seem to harmonise less with the fragrant 
groves and graceful porticoes in which his countrymen 
paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of 
Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths 
of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic 20 
Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her 
seven-headed idols. His favourite gods are those of the 
elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, com- 
pared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an 
upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. 25 
Foremost among his creations of this class stands Pro- 
metheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, 
the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus 
bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the 
Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience 3° 
of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable 



MILTON. 31 

pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in 
very different proportions, some kind and generous feel- 
ings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. 
He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture : 

5 he is rather too much depressed and agitated. His 
resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he 
possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer in his 
hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. 
But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might 

10 of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity 
of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived 
without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. 
Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of 
Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning 

15 with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of 
unintermitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, rest- 
ing on its own innate energies, requiring no support from 
anything external, nor even from hope itself. 1 

44. To return for a moment to the parallel which we 

20 have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, 
we would add that the poetry of these great men Contrast in 
has in a considerable degree taken its character from, their char- 
their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They acters - 
rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They 

25 have nothing in common with those modern beggars for 
fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of the 
inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of 
their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two 
writers whose works have been more completely, though 

30 undesignedly, coloured by their personal feelings. 
1 Note, p. 80. 



32 



MILTON. 



45. The character of Milton was peculiarly distin- 
guished by loftiness of spirit ; that of Dante by intensity 

Character of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy 
of Dante. we discern the asperity which is produced by pride 
struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the 5 
world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy 
of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at 
this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external 
circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor 
glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of 10 
heaven could dispel it. It turned every consolation 
and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled 
that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitter- 
ness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. 
His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, 15 
" a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the 
light was as darkness I Ml The gloom of his character dis- 
colours all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, 
and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise 
and the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits 20 
of him are singularly characteristic. No person can look 
on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark fur- 
rows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stare of the 
eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and 
doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too sen- 25 
sitive to be happy. 

46. Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover ; 
and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition 

and in love. He had survived his health and his 

Character 

of Miiton. sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity 30 



Job X. 22. 



MILTON. 33 

of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been 
distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been 
taken away from the evil to come ; some had carried into 
foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppres- 
5 sion ; some were pining in dungeons ; and some had 
poured forth their blood on scaffolds. 1 Venal and 
licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe 
the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a bellman, were 
now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the 

io public. 1 It was a loathsome herd, which could be com- 
pared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus: gro- 
tesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping' with 
wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. 
Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the chaste 

15 lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be 
chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the 
whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. 1 If ever despondency 
and asperity could be excused in any man, they might 
have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his 

20 mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor 
gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor 
political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majes- 
tic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been 

25 high, but they were singularly equable. His temper 
was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which 
no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it 
was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from 
his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, 

3° loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patri- 
1 Note, p. 81. 



34 MILTON. 

otic hopes, 1 such it continued to be, when, after having 
experienced every calamity which is incident to our 
nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to 
his hovel to die. 

47. Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise 5 
Lost at a time of life when images of beauty and tender- 

His char- ness are in general beginning to fade, even from 
acter ex- those minds in which they have not been effaced 
Paradise by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it 
LosL with all that is most lovely and delightful in the 10 

physical and in the moral world. Neither Theocritus 
nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the 
pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to luxu- 
riate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightin- 
gales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of 15 
shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the 
voluptuousness of the Oriental haram, and all the gal- 
lantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and 
quiet affection of an English fireside. His poetry reminds 
us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, 20 
beautiful as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most rugged 
and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom 
unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. 

48. Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton 
may be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly 25 

The displayed in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poems 

Sonnets. nave been undervalued by critics who have not 

understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic 

point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the 

thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Pe- 30 

1 See outline of Milton's life, p. xxvii. 



<• 2 

3 > 

Ul 

td ?S 

1 O 

* > 




MILTON. 35 

trarch in the style. They are simple but majestic 
records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out 
for the public eye as his diary would have been. A vic- 
tory, 1 an expected attack upon the city, 2 a momentary fit 
5 of depression or exultation, 3 a jest thrown out against one 
of his books, 4 a dream which, for a short time restored to 
him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed 
for ever, 5 led him to musings which, without effort, shaped 
themselves into verse.* The unity of sentiment and 

io severity of style which characterise these little pieces 
remind us of the Greek Anthology, ° or perhaps still more 
of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem 
on the Massacres of Piedmont 6 is strictly a collect in 
verse. 

15 49. The Sonnets are more or less striking, according 
as the occasions which gave birth to them are more or 
less interesting. But they are, almost without ex- Their 
ception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of typical 
mind to which we know not where to look for a character - 

20 parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any 
decided inferences as to the character of a writer from 
passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we 
have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly 
marked in those parts of his works which treat of his per- 

25 sonal feelings, are distinguishable in every page, and im- 
part to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, Latin, 
and Italian, a strong family likeness. 

* See Milton's Minor Poems (Heath) : 1 Sonnet XII; 2 Son- 
net III ; 3 Sonnet XV ; 4 Sonnet VI ; 5 Sonnet XVIII ; 6 Sonnet 
XVI. 



36 MILTON. 

50. His public conduct was such as was to be expected 
from a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so pow- 

n ••*■ , erful. He lived at one of the most memorable 

rolitical 

conditions eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of 
in 1608-74. tne g rea t conflict between Oromasdes and Ari- 5 
manes, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. 
That great battle was fought for no single generation, for 
no single land. The destinies of the human race were 
staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English 
people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty prin- 10 
ciples which have since worked their way into the depths 
of the American forests, which have roused Greece from 
the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, 1 and 
. which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled 
an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and 15 
loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted 
fear. 

51. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant 
existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent 

The annai- nterarv champion. We need not say how much we 20 
ists of the admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise 
period. f rom ourse i ves that a large portion of his country- 
men still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has 
been more discussed, and is less understood, than any 
event in English history. The friends of liberty laboured 25 
under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable com- 
plained so bitterly. 2 Though they were the conquerors, 
their enemies were the painters. As a body, the Round- 
heads had done their utmost to decry and ruin litera- 
ture ; and literature was even with them, as, in 'the long 30 
1 Note, p. 82. 2 Note, p. 83. 



MILTON 37 

run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on 
their side of the question is the charming narrative of 
Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the Parliament is 
good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the 

5 struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and 
violent ; and most of the later writers who have espoused 
the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine 
Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished 
by zeal than either by candour or by skill. On the other 

io side are the most authoritative and the most popular his- 
torical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and 
that of Hume." The former is not only ably written and 
full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity 
and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors 

15 with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose 
fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public 
are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so 
much that he hated liberty for having been allied with 
religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the 

20 dexterity of an advocate while affecting the impartiality 
of a judge. 

52. The public conduct of Milton must be approved 
or condemned according as the resistance of the people 
to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or / Thesjs ^ 

25 criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for " Kinship 
dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that ° f J. 1 ?* 5 Re ~ , 

fe 1 ° belhon and 

interesting and most important question. We shall the Revo- 
not argue it on general grounds. We shall not lution -" 
recur to those primary principles from which the claim 
30 of any government to the obedience of its subjects is 
to be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage ground ; 



38 MILTON 

but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so con- 
fident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate 
the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who 
vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all ene- 
mies, and to give their antagonists the advantage of sun 5 
and wind. We will take the naked constitutional ques- 
tion. We confidently affirm, that every reason which 
can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 * may 
be urged with at least equal force in favour of what is 
called the Great Rebellion. 2 10 

53. In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest 
admirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better 

Argument sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and 
1. Charles's profession, a Papist ; we say in name and profes- 
re lgion. s - Qn ^ k ecause k ot h Charles himself and his creature 15 
Laud, 3 while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, 
retained all its worst vices, a complete subjection of rea- 
son to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, 
a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous venera- 
tion for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless 20 
intolerance. 4 This, however, we waive. We will concede 
that Charles was a good Protestant; but we say that his 
Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction 
between his case and that of James. 

54. The principles of the Revolution have often been 25 
grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the 

Common course of the present year. There is a certain class 
sentatfon" °^ men > wno > while they profess to hold in reverence 
of the issue, the great names and great actions of . former times, 

1 Int., p. xxv. 2 lb., p. xx. 3 See p. xx, and Index, " Laud." 

4 Note, p. 83. 



MILTON. 39 

never look at them for any other purpose than in 
order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses. 1 
In every venerable precedent they pass by what is essen- 
tial, and take only what is accidental : they keep out of 
5 sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation 
all that is defective. If, in any part of any great example, 
there be anything unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with 
an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous 
delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of 
io them, they feel, with their prototype, that 

" Their labour must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil." 2 

55. To the blessings which England has derived from 
the Revolution these people are utterly insensible. The 

15 expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of r 
popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go not re- 
for nothing with them. One sect there was, which, ligion - 
from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought neces- 
sary to keep under close restraint. 1 One part of the 

20 empire there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at 
that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and 
its slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of the 
Revolution which the politicians of whom we speak, love 
to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed to 

2> vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good which 
it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or 
of South America. 1 They stand forth zealots for the 
doctrine of Divine Right, 3 which has now come back to 



1 Note, p. 83. 2 Paradise Lost, i. 164. 3 Int. 



p. xix, 



A 



40 MILTON. 

us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of 
Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then 
William is a hero. Then Somers ° and Shrewsbury ° are 
great men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era. The 
very same persons who, in this country, never omit an 5 
opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite ° slander 
respecting the Whigs 1 of that period, have no sooner 
crossed St. George's Channel, than they begin to fill their 
bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory. They 
may truly boast that they look not at men, but at meas- 10 
ures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it ; 
the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand 
the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. 2 On such 
occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon 
their candid construction. The bold assertions of these 15 
people have of late impressed a large portion of the pub- 
lic with an opinion that James the Second was expelled 
simply because he was a Catholic, and that the Revolu- 
tion was essentially a Protestant Revolution. 

56. But this certainty was not the case; nor can any 20 
person who has acquired more knowledge of the history 
issue was of those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's 
tyranny. Abridgment believe that, if James had held his 
own religious opinions without wishing to make prose- 
lytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had 25 
contented himself with exerting only his constitutional 
influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange l would 
ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, 
knew their own meaning ; and, if we may believe them, 
their hostility was primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. 30 
1 Int., p. xxv. 2 Note, p. 84. 



MILTON. 41 

They did not drive out a tyrant because he was a Catho 
lie ; but they excluded Catholics from the crown, because 
they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground on 
which they, in their famous resolution, 1 declared the 

5 throne vacant, was this, " that James had broken the 
fundamental laws of the kingdom." Every man, there- 
fore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold 
that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the 
sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, is 

10 this : Had Charles the First broken the fundamental 
laws of England ? 

57. No person can answer in the negative, unless he 
refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought 
against Charles by his opponents, but to the nar- Charles' 

15 ratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the con- a tyrant, 
fessions of the King himself. If there be any truth in 
any historian of any party who has related the events of 
that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to 
the meeting of the Long Parliament, 2 had been a con- 

2otinued course of oppression and treachery. Let those 
who applaud the Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion, 
mention one act of James the Second to which a parallel 
is not to be found in the history of his father. Let them 
lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of 

25 Right, 1 presented by the two Houses to William and 
Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have vio- 
lated. He had, according to the testimony of his own 
friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised 
taxes without the consent of parliament, and quartered 

30 troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious 
1 Int., p. xxvi. 2 Int., p. xx. 



42 MILTON. 

manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed 
without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of 
debate ; the right of petition was grossly violated ; 
arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted 
imprisonments, were grievances of daily occurrence. If 5 
these things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was 
treason ; if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. 

58. But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? 
Why, after the King had consented to so many reforms, 
and an in- anc * renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, 10 
corrigible did the parliament continue to rise in their de- 
tyrant, mands at the risk of provoking a civil war? The 

ship money 1 had been given up. The Star Chamber 
had been abolished. Provision had been made for the 
frequent convocation and secure deliberation of parlia- 15 
ments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by 
peaceable and regular means? We recur again to the 
analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from 
the throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? 
He too had offered to call a free parliament and to sub- 20 
mit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are 
in the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a 
revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, 
twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing 
army, and a national debt, 2 to the rule, however re- 25 
stricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The Long Par- 
liament acted on the same principle, and is entitled to 
the same praise. They could not trust the King. He 
had no doubt passed salutary laws ; but what assurance 
was there that he would not break them? He had 30 
1 Int., p. xx. 2 Note, p. 84. 




CHARLES I 



MILTON. 43 

renounced oppressive prerogatives ; but where was the 
security that he would not resume them? The nation 
had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man 
who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man 

5 whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and 
never redeemed. 

59. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still 
stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. 1 No 
action of James can be compared to the conduct even 

10 of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. 2 worse than 
The Lords and Commons present him with a bill J ames 
in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked 
out. He hesitates ; he evades ; at last he bargains to 
give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his 

15 solemn assent ; the subsidies are voted ; but no sooner 
is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at once to all 
the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to 
abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act 
which he had been paid to pass. 

20 60. For more than ten years the people had seen 
the rights which were theirs by a double claim, by im- 
memorial inheritance and by recent purchase, in 1 
fringed by the perfidious king who had recognised beiiionwas, 
them. At length circumstances compelled Charles therefore, 

25 to summon another parliament : another chance 
was given to our fathers : were they to throw it away 
as they had thrown away the former? Were they again 
to be cozened by le Rot le veut? Were they again to 
advance their money on pledges which had been for- 

30 feited over and over again ? Were they to lay a second 
1 Int., p. xxvi. 2 lb., p. xix. 3 Note, p. 84. 



44 MILTON. 

Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant 
another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning 
ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after 
ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince 
should again require a supply, and again repay it with 5 
a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether 
they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think 
that they chose wisely and nobly. 

61. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of 
other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence 10 

Argument * s produced, generally decline all controversy about 
2. Charles's the facts, and content themselves with calling tes- 
He'had*' timony to character. He had so many private 
virtues, virtues ! And had James the Second no private 
virtues? Was even Oliver Cromwell, 1 his bitterest ene- 15 
mies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues ? 
And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? 
A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, 
and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the 
ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones 20 
in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A 
good father ! A good husband ! Ample apologies indeed 
for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood ! 

62. We charge him with having broken his corona- 
tion oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage 25 

vow ! We accuse him of having given up his 

but he had . . . < _ 

greater people to the merciless inflictions 01 the most 
vices. hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates 2 ; and 

the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee 
and kissed him ! We censure him for having violated 30 
1 Int., p. xxi. 2 Index, " Laud." 



MILTON. 45 

the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for 
good and valuable consideration, promised to observe 
them ; and we are informed that he was accustomed to 
hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning ! It is to 
5 such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke ° 
dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he 
owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the 
present generation. 

63. For ourselves, we own that we do not understand 

10 the common phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We 
can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural The in _ 
father, or a good man and a treacherous friend, ciple in- 
We cannot, in estimating the character of an indi- volved - 
vidual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in 

15 the most important of all human relations ; and if in 
that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, 
and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad 
man, in spite of all his temperance 'at table, and all his 
regularity at chapel. 

20 64. We cannot refrain from adding a few words re- 
specting a topic on which the defenders of Charles are 
fond of dwelling. If, they say, he governed his 
people ill, he at least governed them after the ^T^ 6 ^. 
example of his predecessors. If he violated their lowed prec- 

25 privileges, it was because those privileges had not edent -" 
been accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever 
been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the 
annals of the Tudors. This point Hume ° has laboured, 
with an art which is as discreditable in a historical work 

30 as it would be admirable in a forensic address. 1 The 
1 See Hume's History of England, Appendix III (to Chap. XLIV). 



46 MILTON. 

answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented 
to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppres- 
sive powers said to have been exercised by his prede- 
cessors, and he had renounced them for money. 1 He 
was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against 5 
his own recent release. 

65. These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem 
superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have 

observed how much the events of that time are 
misrepresented and misunderstood, will not blame 10 

us for stating the case simply. It is a case of which the 

simplest statement is the strongest. 

66. The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely 
choose to take issue on the great points of the question. 

They content themselves with exposing some of the 15 

Argument J . 

4. Ex- crimes and follies to which public commotions 

cesses of necessarilv give birth. They bewail the unmerited 

the Rebels 

fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless vio- 
lence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names 
of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts ; 20 
soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; 
upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession 
of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old 
gentry ; boys' smashing the beautiful windows of cathe- 
drals ; Quakers riding naked through the market-place ; 25 
Fifth-monarchy-men ° shouting for King Jesus ; agitators 
lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag ° ; — 
all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great 
Rebellion. 2 

67. Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this 30 

1 Note, p. 85. 2 Int., p. xxi. 



MILTON. 47 

matter. These charges, were they infinitely more im- 
portant, would not alter our opinion of an event which 
alone has made us to differ from the slaves who These were 
crouch beneath despotic sceptres. 1 Many evils, necessary 
5 no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They evi s * 
were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been 
worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of 
tyranny to tear and -rend the body which he leaves. Are 
the miseries of continued possession less horrible than 
10 the struggles of the tremendous exorcism ? 

63. If it were possible that a people brought up under 
an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that 
system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the _ 

J j j ■> They were 

objections to despotic power would be removed, fruits of 

15 We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowl- t y rann y- 
edge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on 
the intellectual and moral character of a nation. We 
deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But 
the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel 

20 that a revolution was necessary. The violence of those 
outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and 
ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity and ignorance 
of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and 
degradation under which they have been accustomed to 

25 live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the 
church and state reaped only that which they had sown. 
The government had prohibited free discussion : it had 
done its best to keep the people unacquainted with their 
duties and their rights. The retribution was just and 

30 natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, 
1 Note, p. 85. 



48 MILTON. 

it was because they had themselves taken away the key 
of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fftry, it 
was because they had exacted an equally blind sub- 
mission. 

69. It is the character of such revolutions that we 5 
always see the worst of them at first. Till men have 
They were been for some time free, they know not how to use 
transitory, their freedom. The natives of wine countries are 
generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity in- 
temperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be 10 
compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine 
or the Xeres.° It is said that, when soldiers in such a 
situation first find themselves able to indulge without 
restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to 
be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches 15 
discretion ; and, after wine has been for a few months 
their daily fare, they become more temperate than they 
had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, 
the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, 
moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often 20 
atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points 
the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. 
It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. , 
They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished 
edifice : they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, 25 ' 
the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the 
whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where the 
promised splendour and comfort is to be found. If 
such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would 
never be a good house or a good government in the 30 
world. 



MILTON. 49 

70. Ariosto tells a pretty story J of a fairy, who, by some 
mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear 

at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poison- Th are 
ous snake. Those who injured her during the the mask of 
5 period of her disguise were for ever excluded from Llbert y- 
participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But 
to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied 
and protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the 
beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, 

10 accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled 
their houses with wealth, made them happy in love and 
victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times 
she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she 
hisses, she stings. 2 But woe to those who in disgust shall 

15 venture to crush her ! And happy are those who, hav- 
ing dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful 
shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of 
her beauty and her glory ! 

71. There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
20 acquired freedom produces : and that cure is freedom. 

When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot The 
bear the light of day : he is unable to discriminate .cured by 
colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is, not Llbert y> 
to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him 

25 to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty 
may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have 
become half blind in the house of bondage. But let 
them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In 
a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence 

30 of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each 
1 Orlando Furioso, Canto XLIII. 2 Note, p. 85. 



50 MILTON. 

other. The scattered elements of truth cease to con- 
tend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of 
justice and order is educed out of the chaos. 

72. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of lay- 
ing it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people 5 

and not ought to be free till they are fit to use their free- 
otherwise. d om . The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old 
story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had 
learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they 
become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait 10 
for ever. 

73. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the 
conduct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, 

Execution in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in 
of Charles fa e conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the 15 

theoreti- TTT , 

caiiy justi- cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware that 
fiabie, the poet has been charged with personal participa- 

tion in any of the blameable excesses of that time. The 
favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct 
which he pursued with regard to the execution of the 20 
King. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means 
approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many emi- 
nent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more 
particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that 
nothing can be more absurd than the imputations which, 25 
for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been the 
fashion to cast upon the Regicides. 1 We have, through- 
out, abstained from appealing to first principles. We 
will not appeal to them now. We recur again -to the 
1 Note, p. 85. 



MILTON. 51 

parallel case of the Revolution. What essential distinc- 
tion can be drawn between the execution of the father 
and the deposition of the son? What constitutional 
maxim is there which applies to the former and not to 
5 the latter? The King can do no wrong. If so, James 
was as innocent as Charles could have been. The min- 
ister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the 
Sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jefferies ° and retain 
James ? The person of a king is sacred. Was the per- 

icson of James considered sacred at the Boyne°? To dis- 
charge cannon against an army in which a King is known 
to be posted is to approach pretty near to regicide. 
Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put- 
to death by men who had been exasperated by the hos- 

15 tilities of several years, and who had never been bound 
to him by any other tie than that which was common to 
them with all their fellow-citizens. Those who drove 
James from his throne, who seduce"d his army, who 
alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his 

20 palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in 
upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who 
pursued him with fire and sword from one part of .the 
empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his 
adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his 

25 nephew and his two daughters. 1 When we reflect on 
all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the 
same persons who, on the fifth of November, 1 thank God 
for wonderfully conducting his servant William, and for 
making all opposition fall before him until he became 

30 our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth of Janu- 
1 Note, p. 85. 



52 MILTON. 

ary, 1 contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal 
Martyr may be visited on themselves and their children. 

74. We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of 
Charles ; not because the constitution exempts the King 

.. from responsibility, for we know that all such max- 5 
caiiya ims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor 

blunder. because we feel any peculiar interest in his character, 
for we think that his sentence describes him with perfect 
justice as " a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public 
enemy " ; but because we are convinced that the measure 10 
was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it 
removed was a captive and a hostage : his heir, to whom 
the allegiance of every Royalist was instantly transferred, 
was at large. The Presbyterians 2 could never have been 
perfectly reconciled to the father : they had no such 15 
rootedr enmity to the son. The great body of the peo- 
ple, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings 
which, however unreasonable, no government could 
safely venture to outrage. 

75. But though we think the conduct of the Regicides 20 
blameable, that of Milton appears to us in a very differ- 

„., , ent light. The deed was done. It could not be 

Milton s o 

attitude undone. The evil was incurred ; and the object 
justifiable. wag tQ ren( j er it as small as possible. We censure 
the ,chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular 25 
opinion; but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to 
change that opinion. The very feeling which would 
have restrained us from committing the act would have 
led us, after it had been committed, to defend it against 
the ravings of servility and superstition. For the sake 30 
1 Note, p. 85. 2 Int., p. xviii and p. xx. 



MILTON. 53 

of public liberty, we wish that the thing had not been done, 
while the people disapproved of it. But, for the sake of 
public liberty, we should also have wished the people to 
approve of it when it was done. If anything more 
5 were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book 
of Salmasius would furnish it. That miserable perfor- 
mance is now with justice considered only as a beacon to 
word-catchers who wish to become statesmen. The celeb- 
rity of the man who refuted it, the " JEnese magni dex- 

io tra," 1 gives it all its fame with the present generation. In 
that age the state of things was different. It was not 
then fully understood how vast an interval separates the 
mere classical scholar from the political philosopher. 
Nor can it be doubted that a treatise which, bearing the 

15 name of so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental 
principles of all free governments, must, if suffered to 
remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious 
effect on the public mind. 

76. We wish to add a few words relative to another 

20 subject, on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, 
his conduct during the administration of the Pro- His atti- 
tector. 2 That an enthusiastic votary of liberty tude 

rr ! -i- 'towards 

should accept office under a military usurper Cromwel 
seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all 

25 the circumstances in which the country was then placed 
were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no 
vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic 
power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the 
Parliament, and never deserted it, till it had deserted its 

30 duty. If he dissolved it by force, 2 it was not till he found 
1 Note, p. 85. 2 Int., p. xxi. 



54 MILTON. 

that the few members who remained after so many deaths, 
secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate 
to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and 
to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. 
But even when thus placed by violence at the head of 5 
affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the 
country a constitution far more perfect than any which 
had at that time been known in the world. He reformed 
the representative system in a manner which has extorted 
praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he de- 10 
manded indeed the first place in the commonwealth ; but 
with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadt- 
holder, or an American president. He gave the Parlia- 
ment a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to 
it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to 15 
himself a veto on its enactments ; and he did not require 
that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his fam- 
ily. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time 
and the opportunities which he had of aggrandising him- 
self be fairly considered, he will net lose by comparison 20 
with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been 
met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to 
think that he would have overstepped the line which he 
had traced for himself. But when he found that his 
parliaments questioned the authority under which they 25 
met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the 
restricted power which was absolutely necessary to his 
personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he 
adopted a more arbitrary policy. 

77. Yet, though we believe that the intentions of 30 
Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that 



com- 
mendable. 



MILTON. 55 

he was driven from the noble course which he had marked 
out for himself by the almost irresistible force of cir- 
cumstances, though we admire, in common with i twasprac 
all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his ticaily 

5 splendid administration, we are not pleading for ar 
bitrary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know 
that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best 
despot. But we suspect, that at the time of which we 
speak, the violence of religious and political enmities 

io rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossi- 
ble. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, 
but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton 
chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the 
events of the Protectorate with those of the thirty years 

15 which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in 
the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, 
though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an 
admirable system. Never before had religious liberty 
and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater 

20 degree. Never had the national honour been better 
upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at 
home. And it was rarely that any opposition which 
stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment 
of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institu- 

25 tions which he had established, as set down in the In- 
strument of Government, 1 and the Humble Petition and 
Advice, 1 were excellent. His practice, it is true, too 
often departed from the theory of these institutions. 
But, had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that 

30 his institutions would have survived him, and that his 
1 Int., p. xxi. 



56 MILTON. 

arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power 
had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It 
was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, 
therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector, 
unless he were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The 5 
events which followed his decease are the most complete 
vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold 
his authority. His death dissolved the whole frame of 
society. The army rose against the parliament, the dif- 
ferent corps of the army against each other. Sect raved 10 
against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presby- 
terians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Inde- 
pendents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all 
their old principles. Without casting one glance on the 
past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw 15 
down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and 
heartless of tyrants. 

78. Then came those days, never to be recalled with- 
out a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty, and 
sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic 20 
p ff m vi ces j the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, 
later condi- the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the 
tIons * slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might 

trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and 
pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults, 25 
and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, 
and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. 
The government had just ability enough to deceive, and 
just religion enough to persecute. The principles of 
liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the 30 
Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high 



MILTON. 57 

place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial ° and 
Moloch ° ; and England propitiated those obscene and 
cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest chil- 
dren. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to dis- 

5 grace, till the race accursed of God and man was a 
second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the 
earth, and to be a by- word and a shaking of the head to 
the nations. 
^79. Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made 

10 on the public character of Milton, apply to him only as one 
of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some Parties 
of the peculiarities which distinguished him from during the 
his contemporaries. And, for that purpose, it is Rebfelhon - 
necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which 

15 the political world was at that time divided. We must 
premise, that our observations are intended to apply only 
to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one 
or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every 
faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of 

20 camp-followers, an useless and heartless rabble, who prowl 
round its line of march in the hope of picking up some- 
thing under its protection, but desert it in the day of 
battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. 
England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded 

25 with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their 
support to every government as it rose, who kissed the 
hand of the King in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, 
who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugu- 
rated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to 

30 be hanged at Tyburn, 1 who dined on calves' heads, or 
1 Int., p. xxii. 



58 MILTON. 

stuck up oak-branches, 1 as circumstances altered, without 
the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out 
of the account. We take our estimate of parties from 
those who really deserve to be called partisans. 



80. We would speak first of the Puritans, 2 the most 5 

remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has 

The Puri- ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts 

tans. f tne j r character lie on the surface. He' that runs 

Their re- . , , . . 

puted char- mav rea d them ; nor have there been wanting 

acter - attentive and malicious observers to point them 10 

out. For many years after the Restoration, they were 

the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They 

were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press 

and of the stage, at the time when the press and the 

stage were most licentious. They were not men of let- 1 S 

ters ; they were, as a body, unpopular ; they could not 

defend themselves ; and the public would not take them 

under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, 

without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and 

dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, 20 

their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, 

their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural 

phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their 

contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite 

amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. 3 25 

But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy 

of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this 

subject should carefully guard against the influence of 

1 Note, p. 85. 2 Int., p. xviii. 3 Note, p. 86. 



MILTON. 



59 



that potent ridicule which has already misled so many 
excellent writers. 

" Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il no 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
5 Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 

Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." * 1 

81. Those who roused the people to resistance, who 
directed their measures through a long series of eventful 
years, who ' formed, out of the most unpromising Their real 

10 materials, the finest army that Europe had ever character, 
seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, 
who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and re- 
bellion, made the name of England terrible to every 
nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. 

15 Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like 
the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We 
regret that these badges were not more attractive. We 
regret that a body to whose courage *and talents mankind 
has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty ele- 

2ogance which distinguished some of the adherents of 
Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which 
the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if 
we must make our cho'ice, we shall, like Bassanio ° in the 
play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only 

25 the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the 
plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 

82. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived 

a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of 

superior beings and eternal interests. Not content m . . 
Their m- 

30 with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling centives. 

1 Note, p. 86. * La Gerusalemme Liberate, XV. 57. 



60 MILTON. 

Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the 
will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too 
vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To 
know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the 
great end of existence. They rejected with contempt 5 
the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted 
for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching 
occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring 
veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable bright- 
ness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence 10 
originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The 
difference between the greatest and the meanest of man- 
kind seemed to vanish, when compared with the bound- 
less interval which separated the whole race from him on 
whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recog- 15 
nised no title to superiority but his favour ; and, confident 
of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and 
all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted 
with the works of philosophers and poets, they were 
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were 20 
not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded 
in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied 
by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering 
angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses 
not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory 25 
which should never fade away. On the rich and the 
eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with 
contempt : for they esteemed themselves rich in a more 
precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime lan- 
guage, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and 3° 
priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very 



MILTON. 61 

meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious 
and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest 
action the spirits of light and darkness looked with 
anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven 
5 and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should 
continue when heaven and earth should have passed 
away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed 
to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For 
his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. 

10 For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by 
the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. 
He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the 
grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by 
the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly 

15 sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been dark- 
ened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had 
risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of 
her expiring God. 1 

83. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different 

20 men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, 
passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, saga- 
cious. He prostrated himself in the dust before 
his Maker : but he set his foot on the neck of his king. 
In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convul- 

25 sions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by 
glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of 
angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught 
a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from 
dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane,° he thought him- 

30 self intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. 1 
1 Note, p. 86. 



62 MILTON. 

Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul 
that God had hid his face from him. But when he 
took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for 
war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left 
no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw 5 
nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and 
heard nothing from them but their groans and their 
whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had 
little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall 
of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics 10 
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judg- 
ment and an immutability of purpose which some writers 
have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but 
which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The 
intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 15 
tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment 
had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and 
fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. 
They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and 
their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. En- 20 
thusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds 
from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised 
them above the influence of danger and of corruption. 
It sometimes, might lead them to pursue unwise ends, 
but never to choose unwise means. They went through 25 
the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his 
flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling 
with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in 
human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and 
to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not' to be 30 
withstood by any barrier. 



MILTON. 63 

84. Such we believe to have been the character of 
the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their man- 
ners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic 

... , T7 . Summary 

habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their of their 
5 minds was often injured by straining after things <i ualities - 
too high for mortal reach : and we know that, in spite of 
their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst 
vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant aus- 
% terity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, 
10 their Dunstans, and their De Montforts, their Dominies ° 
and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are 
taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce 
them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body. * 

85. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty 
15 mainly because it was the cause of religion. There was 

another party, by no means numerous, but distin- 
guished by learning and ability, which acted with t hens." 
them on very different principles. » We speak of Theirclas- 
those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the 

20 Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology of that time, 
doubting Thomases ° or careless Gallios ° with regard to 
religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. 
Heated by the study of ancient literature, they s'et up 
their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves 

25 the heroes of Plutarch ° as their examples. They seem 
to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines ° of the 
French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the 
line of distinction between them and their devout asso- 
ciates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it 

30 convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, im- 
perceptibly adopted. 



64 MILTON. 

86. We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt 

to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, 

with perfect candour. We shall not charge upon 

The Royal- , \ . .. , , f , 

ists. Their a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the 
romanti- horseboys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope 5 
of license and plunder attracted from all the dens 
of Whitefriars ° to the standard of Charles, and who dis- 
graced their associates by excesses which, under the 
stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were % 
never tolerated. We will select a more favourable speci- 10 
men. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King 
was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot 
refrain from looking with complacency on the character 
of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in 
comparing them with the instruments which the despots 15 
of other countries are compelled to employ, with the 
mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the Janis- 
saries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist 
countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bow- 
ing at every step, and simpering at every word. They 20 
were not mere machines for destruction dressed up in 
uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, de- 
fending without love, destroying without hatred. There 
was a freedom in their subserviency, a nobleness in their 
very degradation. The sentiment of individual inde- 25 
pendence was strong within them. They were indeed 
misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion 
and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood, and 
the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell 
potent as that of Duessa ; and, like the Red-Cross 30 
Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an 



MILTON. 65 

injured beauty, while they defended a false and loath- 
some sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all 
into the merits of the political question. It was not for 
a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they 

5 fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so 
many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the 
altars at which they had received the hands of their 
brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than 
their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater 

10 degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are 
the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the 
Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, cour- 
tesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for 
women. They had far more both of profound and 

15 of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners 
were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, 
their tastes more elegant, and their households more 
cheerful. 

87. Milton (fid not strictly belong to any of the classes 
20 which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He 
was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. Milton. 
In his character the noblest qualities of every party • Hi s unique 
were combined in harmonious union. From the 
Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and 
25 from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral 
circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel 
of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew 
to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected 
all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those 
30 finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived 



66 MILTON. 

" As ever in his great task -master's eye." * 
Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an 
Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he 
acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their 
fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But 5 
not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was 
more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic 
delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, 
their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. 
Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless 10 
all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were 
almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. 
There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of 
literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a 
more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though 15 
his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associa- 
tions were such as harmonise best with monarchy and 
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feel- 
ings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of 
those feelings he was the master and not the slave. Like 20 
the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fasci- 
nation ; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the 
songs of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being 
seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of 
Circe ° ; but he bore about him a sure antidote against 
the effects of its bewitching sweetness. 1 . The illusions 
which captivated his imagination never impaired his rea- 
soning powers. The statesman was proof against the 
splendour, the solemnity, and the romance which en- 

* See Milton's Minor Poems (Heath), Sonnet I.' 
1 Note, p. 86. 



MILTON. 67 

chanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the 
sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the 
exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in 
the Penseroso, 1 which was published about the same 
5 time, will understand our meaning. This is an incon- 
sistency which, more than anything else, raises his char- 
acter in our estimation, because it shows how many 
private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do 
what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very 

10 struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents ; but 
his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in 
honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he 
destroys her. 

S8. That from which the public character of Milton 

15 derives its great and peculiar splendour still remains to 
be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow Hic • 

riis in- 

a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he centives. 
exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the 
glory of the battle which he fought for the species of 

20 freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then 
the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, 
is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among 
his contemporaries raised their voices against Ship- 
money and the Star-chamber. But there were few 

25 indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral 
and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would 
result from the liberty of the press 2 and the unfettered 
exercise of private judgment. These were the objects 
which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. 

30 He was desirous that the people should think for them- 
1 Note, p. 86. 2 Index, " Censorship." 



68 MILTON. 

selves as well as tax themselves, and should be emanci- 
pated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that 
of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best inten- 
tions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented 
themselves with pulling down the King and imprisoning 5 
the malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his 
own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train 
of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the 
captive. They thought only of conquering when they 
should have thought of disenchanting. 10 

" Oh, ye mistook ! Ye should have snatched his wand 
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." * 1 15 

89. To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, 

to break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the 

seat of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. 
His ; 

achieve- To this all his public conduct was directed. For 
ment. . fa\s he joined the Presbyterians ; for this he for- 20 
sook them. He fought their perilous battle ; but he 
turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. 
He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, 
were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore 
joined the Independents, and called upon Cromwell to 25 
break the secular chain, and to save free conscience from 
the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. 1 With a view to the 
same great object, he attacked the licensing system, 2 in 
that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear 

* Comus, 815-819. 1 Note, p. 86. 2 Index, "Censorship." 



MILTON. 69 

as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his 
eyes. 1 His attacks were, in general, directed less against 
particular abuses than against those deeply seated errors 
on which almost all abuses are founded, the servile 
5 worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of 
innovation. 

90. That he might shake the foundations of these 

debasing sentiments more effectually, he always selected 

for himself the boldest literary services. He never 

, , , Milton's 

10 came up in the rear, when the outworks had been prose 

carried and the breach entered. He pressed into works - 

the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he 

wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against 

the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to 

15 prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned 
prelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to 
insult a falling party. There is .no more hazardous 
enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into 
those dark and infected recesses in which no light has 

20 ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of 
Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours, and to brave 
the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of 
his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he 
maintained them. He, in general, left to others the 

25 credit of expounding and defending the popular parts 
of his religious and political creed. He took his own 
stand upon those which the great body of his country- 
men reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. 
He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked 
1 Nute, p. 87. 



70 MILTON. 

the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and 
beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and 
fertility. 

" Nitor in adversum; nee me, qui caetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi." 1 e 

91. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of 
Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compo- 

Their en s ^i° ns j tnev deserve the attention of every man 
erai excel- who wishes to become acquainted with the full 
lence. power of the English language. They abound with 10 

passages compared with which the finest declamations of 
Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field 
of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroid- 
ery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise 
Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those 15 
parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, 
excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional 
and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic 
language, " a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping 
symphonies." * 20 

92. We had intended to look more closely at these 
performances, to analyse the peculiarities of the diction, 

Their to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of 

special the Areopagitica | and the nervous rhetoric of the 

Iconoclast,! and to point out some of those mag- 25 
nificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Refor- 
mation,! and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant.! 
But the length to which our remarks have already extended 
renders this impossible. 

1 Note, p. 87. * The Reason of Church Government, Bk. ii. 

t See list of Milton's Works, p. xxix. 




MILTON. 

93. We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear 
ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately 
following the publication of this relic of Milton p en -picture 
appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated of Milton. 

5 to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, 
on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, 
how worthless soever may be the offering which we bring 
to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be 
contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hun- 

10 dred and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we 
are visiting him in his small lodging ; that we see him 
sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings ; 
that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling 
in vain to find the day ; that we are reading in the lines 

15 of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history 
of his glory and his affliction. We image to ourselves the 
breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest 
word, the passionate veneration with which we should 
kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness 

20 with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed 
such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an 
age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness 
with which we should contest with his daughters, or 
with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading 

25 Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents 
which flowed from his lips. 1 

94. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot 
be ashamed of them ;#nor shall we be sorry if what 

we have written shall in any degree excite them in valu eof his 
30 other minds. We are not much in the habit of work. 
1 Note, p. 87. 



72 MILTON. 

idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that 
there is no more certain indication- of a weak and ill- 
regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want 
of a better name, we will venture to christen Bosvvellism. 
But there are a few characters which have stood the clos- 5 
est scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried 
in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been 
weighed in the balance and have not been found wanting, 
which have been declared sterling by the general consent 
of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image 10 
and superscription of the Most High. These great men 
we trust that we know how to prize ; and of these was 
Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, 
are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celes- 
tial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Mas- 15 
singer ° sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the 
earth, and which were distinguished from the produc- 
tions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and 
sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and 
to heal. 1 They are powerful, not only to delight, but 20 
to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who 
can study either the life or the writings of the great poet 
and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the 
sublime works with which his genius has enriched our lit- 
erature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public 25 
good, the fortitude with which he endured every private 
calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down 
on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he 
bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so 
sternly kept with his country and with his fame., 30 

1 Note, p. 87. 



NOTES, EXPLANATORY AND ILLUS- 
TRATIVE. 

2. $. Professor Masson, the leading authority on Milton's life and 
writings, has shown that Daniel Skinner (a relative of the Cyriac Skin- 
ner mentioned in p. i, 1. 13) served as amanuensis for Milton, and under- 
took to secure the publication of the treatise De Doctrina Christiana. 
The system of censorship then prevailing forbade its publication in 
England (see Index, " Censorship"), and it was sent to Amsterdam to 
be printed. But enough pressure was brought to bear upon Skinner to 
secure its suppression, and it was returned to England and placed in 
safe keeping in the office of the Secretary of State, where it was redis- 
covered by Mr. Lemon in 1823. 

23. The Pharisees were a Hebrew sect, noted for their rigid adher- 
ence to the letter of the prescriptions of their religious organization, 
especially in the matter of avoiding technical defilement, through con- 
tact with persons and things declared unclean by their code. So 
classical students who submit to academic jules of composition would 
carefully avoid using many expressions not* found in classical authors, 
while Milton would have no scruples about using them. 

3. 7. " Horace his wit and Virgil's state 

He did not steal, but emulate ; 

And when he would like them appear, 

Their garb, but not their clothes did wear." 

DENHAM, Elegy on Cowley. 

18. Milton had published four books on the subject of divorce 
(1644-1645) during the period of temporary estrangement from his first 
wife. In these he took the extreme ground that marriage ties should be 
severed by common consent whenever the love that should sanctify mar- 
riage had ceased to exist. At the same time he had (without legal 
divorce from his wife) begun to make overtures toward marriage with 
another lady. Thus readers at all acquainted with his life should not 
have been surprised at the theories on polygamy broached in the new- 
found treatise. 

23, 24. Milton's propositions in regard to the subjects here men- 
tioned were the logical outcome of his fundamental religious belief, that 

73 



74 NOTES. 

from God every existing thing was created. From this he deduced as 
corollaries the theories (i) that Christ, the "Son of God," was created 
at some definite point of time by God, and therefore has not existed 
from all eternity, and is not equal with his Father except by the decree 
of the latter (" Arianism," 1. 17) ; (2) that matter, created out of God, 
shares the divine quality of its origin, and cannot suffer annihilation ; 
(It is interesting to note that the question whether annihilation is pos- 
sible was raised for the first time in the history of the Universe by a 
fallen angel, in Hell. See P. L. II. 153, 154) ; (3) that the Son of God 
to whom absolute power had been delegated, had the power to abrogate 
the Jewish Sabbath, and therefore its observance was not obligatory. 

5. 24. In his Life of Milton, Johnson writes: "There prevailed in 
his time an opinion that the world was in its decay, and that we have 
had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of Nature.' It 
was suspected that the whole creation languished, that neither trees nor 
animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors, and that every- 
thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution. Milton appears to 
suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is not without 
some fear that his book is to be written in an age too late for heroick 
poesy." He then proceeds to ridicule Milton's noble ambition to " leave 
something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it 
die," and represents Milton's ambition as a merely vulgar wish to be 
" the giant of the pygmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind." 

12. 1. The reference is to a passage in Johnson's Life of Milton, 
in which he says : " He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin 
tongue . . . but the products of his vernal fertility have been sur- 
passed by many, and particularly by his contemporary, Cowley." 

16. 30. The typical Greek drama differed from that of modern 
times in the larger proportion of the lyric element which it contained. 
The chorus was the dominant feature, the meagre incidents of the play 
serving mainly as incentives to long lyric outbursts by the chorus, 
expressing emotions appropriate to the action. The dramatist thus 
conveyed to his audience what he thought, and wished them to feel about 
the incidents of the drama, instead of allowing these to occupy the 
attention of the audience and provoke the appropriate emotions by 
their own impressiveness, as in the modern tragedy. In the Samson, 
Milton makes use of a chorus, but fails to make its utterances vital to 
the expression of the dramatic ideas, and fails to free himself wholly 
from the influence of modern dramatic conceptions. The language of 
the chorus is too often that of the intellect rather than of the feelings. 

20. 2. In the Comus, an angel is sent by God to Earth to protect 
the heroine and her two brothers from the assaults of an enchanter. 
In order to avoid attracting attention, this angel disguises himself by 



NOTES. 75 

assuming " the weeds and likeness of a swain " named Thyrsis, who is 
in the service of the children's father. When his task is completed, the 
angel throws aside his disguise, with the words : — 

" To the ocean now I fly, 
And those happy climes that lie 
Where Day never shuts his eye, 
Up in the broad fields of the sky. 
There I suck the liquid air 
All amidst the gardens fair 
Of Hesperus and his daughters three 
That sing about the golden tree. 
Along the crisped shades and bowers 
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring; 
The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours 
Thither all their bounties bring. 
There eternal summer dwells, 
And west winds with musky wing 
About the cedarn alleys fling 
Nard and cassia's balmy smells. 
Iris there with humid bow 
Waters the odorous banks, that blow 
Flowers of more mingled hue 
Than her purfled scarf can shew, 
And drenches with Elysian dew — 



But now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly, or I can run 
Quickly to the green earth's end, 
Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, 
And from thence can soar as soon 
To the corners of the moon. 

Mortals, that would follow me, 
Love Virtue ; she alone is free. 
She can teach ye how to climb 
Higher than the sphery chime ; 
Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself would stoop to her." 

22. 15. The Divine Comedy describes in its three Books (L 'Inferno, 
II Pnrgatorio, II Paradiso) the passage of Dante through the regions 
of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Hell is described as a region situated 
within the crust of the earth in the eastern hemisphere, composed of 
nine huge circles disposed at different levels on the inner circumfer- 
ence of a hollow cone ; they consequently narrow successively in size 



76 NOTES. 

from the vast outermost one to a tenth circle or abyss placed at the 
centre of the earth. In each circle are placed the sinners appropriate 
to that grade. 

The sixth circle contains tombs (1. 19) in which are confined the 
arch-heretics of all ages, suffering eternally the torture of fire. The 
seventh contains souls condemned to Hell because in them the brute 
nature, exhibited in acts of violence and lust, has been permitted to 
dominate and destroy the divine nature. The cataract of Phlegethon 
(1. 17), which flows from the sixth to the seventh circle, is fed by a 
stream which has its source in the ever dripping tears of the wretched 
inhabitants of the upper world. 

First becoming manifest in the seventh circle, the stream, rapidly 
increasing in size, falls, in the cataract here referred to, into " Male- 
bolge," the eighth circle, and thence into the lowest circle. Here it 
freezes into ice about the body of traitors, the chiefest of sinners, lowest 
of whom 'is Lucifer, the arch-fiend. The several passages referred to 
in the text are as follows : — 

14. " The place where down the bank our way we took, 
Was Alp-like, and the view that met us there, 
Such that for fear each eye away would look. 
So doth that ruin beyond Trent appear, 
Which on the flank into the Adige dashed, 
Through earthquake or through prop that failed to bear; 
For from the mountain top whence down it crashed 
E'en to the plain the rock so falls away, 
That one above might climb o'er stones detached." 

Inferno, XII. i+. (Plumptre's Translation ; Heath.) 

17. "E'en as that stream which takes its separate course, 
And from Mount Veso eastward first doth flow, 
And down the Apennino's left slope pours, 
Which men above as Acquacheta know, 
Ere it rush doxvn into its to7-rent bed, 
And lose that name at Torli far below, 
Above San Benedetto murmurs dread 
From Alps, whence it in single leap doth run, 
Where should be room for full a thousand head ; 
Thus headlong from a bank or broken down, 
We heard those waters dark so loudly roar, 
That soon they had had power our ears to stun." — Ibid. IX. 94+. 

19. "As when the Rhone stagnates o'er Arli's plain, 

Or as at Pola near Quarnaro's shore, 
Italia's limit, bordered by the main, 



NOTES. 77 

With sepulchres the earth is studded o'er, 
So rose they there on every side around, 
Saving that here the fashion grieved me more, 
For fiames were scattered o'er each burial mound." 

— Ibid. IX. 112+ 

28. The passage, which describes Satan lying on the burning lake 
in the midst of Hell, stupefied by the shock of his terrible fall when 
hurled headlong from Heaven by the hand of God, is as follows : — 

" Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed ; his other parts besides 
Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, 
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den 
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast 
Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay, 
Chained on the burning lake." — P. L. I. 192+. 

23. 1. The passage is as follows : — 

" While thus he spake, the angelic squadron bright 
Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns 
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round 
With ported spears, as thick as when a field 
Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends 
Her bearded grove of ears which way the wind 
Sways them ; the careful ploughman doubting stands, 
Lest on the threshing-floor his hopeful sheaves 
Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, alarmed, 
Collecting all his might, dilated stood, 
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved : 
His stature reached the sky, and on his crest 
Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp 
What seemed both shield and spear." — P. L. IV. 977+. 



78 NOTES. 

8. Nimrod is one of a group of the giants of fable, who surround 
the eighth circle, or " Malebolge." Antaeus, a comrade of Nimrod, 
lifts Dante from this level to that of the ninth circle. Macaulay's 
rendering is a very accurate translation of the passage in the Inferno, 
XXXI. 58+. 

15. Malebolge is divided into ten " Bolgia," or wards, in which 
are confined those sinners who are being punished for committing 
fraud in some of its various forms. In the last ward are confined 
forgers and liars. The description quoted by Macaulay is found in the 
Inferno, XXIX. 40+. 

15. The passage in Paradise Lost here referred to (13, 14) de- 
scribes a portion of a vision sent to Adam in which, after his fall but 
before his expulsion from Paradise, God reveals to him through the 
agency of the Angel Michael the physical and moral evils which his sin 
has entailed upon his descendants. It reads as follows : — 
" Immediately a place 

Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisome, dark, 

A lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid 

Numbers of all diseased ; all maladies 

Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms 

Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 

Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, 

Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, 

Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy 

And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 

Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 

Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. 

Dire was the tossing, deep the groans ; Despair 

Tended the sick busiest from couch to couch ; 

And over them triumphant Death his dart 

Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked ' 

With vows, as their chief good and final hope." — P.L.XI. 477+. 

24. 7. As Dante prepares to enter the sixth circle of Hell, his way 
is blocked by three Furies, or Gorgons, the aspect of one of whom, 
Medusa, is sufficiently terrible to turn him to stone. Before he catches 
sight of her, his guide, Virgil, warns him thus : — 

" ' Turn thyself back, and keep fast closed thine eye, 
For if the Gorgon come, and thou it see, 
Thou ne'er again shalt reach the world on high.' 

So spake my Guide, and with his own hands he 
Turned me ; nor was he with my hands content, 
But with his own he helped to blindfold me." 

Inferno, IX. 55 +. (Plumtre's Tr.) 



NOTES. 79 

9. In the fifth "Bolgia" of Malebolge dwell the souls of those 
guilty of bribery, suffering, in the midst of a lake of boiling pitch, the 
penalty of the crime of letting money stick to their fingers and defile 
them. Over them hover demons (Malebranche = Evil-claws, Barbaric- 
cia = Ugly-beard, Draghignazzo = Dragon-snout, etc.), who plunge 
them afresh beneath the pitch whenever their heads appear above the 
surface, by means of pronged fieshhooks. {Inferno, XXI.) Dante, in 
terror of the fiends, crouches behind a rock, and later escapes them 
only bv plunging with Virgil into the next " Bolgia." 

1 10. As before stated (note to p. 22, 1. 15), Lucifer is plunged in 
ice in the lowest abyss of Hell, his waist being placed at the exact 
centre of the globe. Down his shaggy sides clambered Virgil, bearing 
Dante clingirig to his neck, but not (as Macaulay says) grasping the 
sides of Lucifer with his own hands. Reversing his position at the 
waist of the monster, Virgil places Dante on a small ledge on the other 
side of the centre of the Earth, and they climb together, by a tortuous 
passage opposite to Hell, to the surface of the earth, where they find 
themselves at the base of the Mount of Purgatory in the midst of the 
unknown watery wastes of the western hemisphere, at a point opposite 
that at which they had entered Hell. 

11. This mountain Dante now climbs, each stage of the ascent 
being signalized by the purifying away of some form of sin from his 
soul. Before he enters the first region of Purgatory, an angel inscribes 
seven times upon his brow (Purgatorio, IX. 112+) the letter P, once 
for each of the seven deadly sins (= peccata). After the first stage is 
passed, one of these is obliterated by an angel stationed at the entrance 
to the second stage {Purgatorio, XII. 97+, n8+),and a similar thing 
(we are led to infer) happens at each following stage. 

27. 1. Macaulay here uses a series of symbolic expressions for the 
several forces that combined to resist the spread of Christianity at its 
inception. The Synagogue typifies, of course, the old Hebraic theology, 
with its prejudices against everything outside the tenets and rules of the 
organized priesthood. The Academy typifies the philosophy of Plato, 
who taught in a school called the "Academy " from 388 to 348 B.C. For 
centuries after his death, his name continued to command so much 
respect that in the year 316 A.D. a philosopher named Arcesilaus estab- 
lished what was called the " New Academy," and pretended to teach a 
philosophical system based upon the doctrines of Plato ; but the under- 
lying principle in his teachings was the Sceptical theory that every sup- 
posed fact of our lives is a matter of doubt. For many generations 
these doctrines contested with Christianity for the dominance of the 
minds of persons of speculative tendencies. The Portico was the site of 
the school of Zeno, founder of the sect of philosophers called Stoics. 



80 NOTES. 

These philosophers aimed to cultivate a lofty indifference to the ordi- 
nary pleasures of life, devoting their lives to the pursuit of true wisdom. 
The " Pride of the Portico " may be inferred from the following quota- 
tion : " ' The wise man,' they said, ' knows everything because he 
possesses a perfect mind. . . . He alone is the true statesman, lawgiver, 
orator, educator, critic, poet, physician. The wise man is unerring 
and faultless. . . . He alone is a true companion, neighbor, kinsman, 
friend.' " The fasces of the Lictor typify the political power of the Roman 
state, which ranged its authority in opposition to the spread of Christi- 
anity ; while the swords of thirty legions stand for the military arm of the 
same mighty state. 

29. 18. Farinata was a heretic, and is therefore confined in one of 
the tombs of the sixth circle of Hell. The pen-portrait of him by Dante 
is celebrated for its power in depicting pride of spirit and a passion of 
partisanship untamable even by the tortures of the damned. He lives 
over again the strife that divided Italy into hostile camps in his lifetime, 
and has lost no portion of his scorn for the low born among the Floren- 
tines, and indeed for the entire populace of the city, because of its hos- 
tility to his own race. 

26. When Dante has ascended the Mount of Purgatory, and has 
been purged of the seven deadly sins (see note on p. 24, 1. 11), 
he meets Beatrice, the lady whose love has dominated nearly his 
whole life. She here typifies the Divine Wisdom which should have 
guided him on earth, but from which he had sometimes strayed into 
philosophical speculations, relying upon his own reason alone. Beatrice 
chides him for these lapses from constancy, using the language of a 
woman chiding an earthly lover. Macaulay wholly fails to give its due 
weight to the allegorical signification of the dialogue. It is found in the 
Purgatorio, Cantos XXX and XXXI. 

31. 18. The references are mainly to the magnificent speech of 
Satan in P. L. I. 242-263, in which — finding himself plunged into a 
gloomy place of torture, where a soil of " marie," that " ever burns with 
solid (as the lake with liquid) fire," slopes toward a lake whose waves 
surge in billows " with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire" — 
he proves his unconquerable courage by " vaunting aloud though 
racked with deep despair." 

" ' Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,' • 
Said then the lost Archangel, ' this the seat 
That we must change for Heaven ? this mournful gloom 
For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he 
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid 
What shall be right : farthest from him is best, 
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme 



NOTES. 81 

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 
Where joy forever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! hail, 
Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor — one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least 
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: 
Here we may reign secure ; and, in my choice, 
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' " 

Macaulay uses the phrases " the sword of Michael " and " the thunder 
of Jehovah " to strengthen his statement ; but the truth is that Satan 
bore up against neither, but was temporarily disabled by the former, 
and driven from the battle writhing with pain, "gnashing for anguish, 
and despite, and shame " ; while from the latter he with his followers 
fled "like a timorous flock," "exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen." 
It was only after the thunder had ceased to " bellow through the vast 
and boundless deep " that he took fresh courage, as indicated above. 

33. 6. Of the great leaders of the Rebellion, Cromwell, Eliot, and 
Hampden had been "taken away from the evil to come"; Sir Henry 
Vane had " poured forth his blood on the scaffold " ; while, of the other 
regicides, Lambert with nineteen of his comrades had been imprisoned 
for life, and nineteen others " had carried into foreign climates their 
unconquerable hatred of oppression." 

10. " The character of the drama became conformed to the char- 
acter of its patrons. The comic poet was the mouthpiece of the 
most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted society. . . . The Puritan 
had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum. The 
Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took 
under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had 
canted; the comic poet blasphemed." — MACAULAY, The Comic 
Dramatists of the Restoration. 

17. The heroine of the Comus is induced by fraud to enter the 
palace of the vile wizard Comus, where she is held by enchantment 
in a chair, without the power of motion, while Comus endeavors 
by enticements and threats to induce her to drink of a potent liquor; 
but her purity of soul and serenity of spirit render her secure against 



82 NOTES. 

either temptation or intimidation. The significance of the scene in 
its application to Macaulay's theme may be gathered from the following 
excerpt : — 

Comus. Nay, lady, sit ; if I but wave this wand, 
Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, 
And you a statue, or as Daphne was, 
Root-bound, that fled Apollo. 

Lady. Fool, do not boast ; 

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind 
With all thy charms, although this corporal rind 
Thou hast immanacled while Heaven sees good. 

Comus. Why are you vext, lady ? why do you frown ? 
Here dwell no frowns nor anger ; from these gates 
Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures 
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, 
When the fresh blood grows lively and returns 
Brisk as the April buds in primrose-season. 
And first behold this cordial julep here, 
That flames and dances in his crystal bounds, 
With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed. . . . 
This will restore all soon. 

Lady. 'Twill not, false traitor ! 

'T will not restore the truth and honesty 
That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies. 
Was this the cottage and the safe abode 
Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these, 
These ugly-headed monsters ? Mercy guard me ! 
Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver! 

34. 4. When the tension between King and Parliament reached a 
critical stage, in 1639, Milton was travelling in Italy. He determined to 
cut short his period of foreign study and recreation, because (as he 
said) " I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad, while 
my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home." Macaulay's pic- 
ture of him at this stage of his life is not exaggerated, but it is not true 
that he later experienced " every calamity which is incident to our 
nature," or that he " retired to a hovel to die." 

36. 13. At the time this essay was published (1825), the Greeks 
had been for four years engaged in a struggle to throw off the yoke of 
Turkish sovereignty, but they did not gain their independence until 
1830. Thus, the period of Greek subjection to .external powers, from 
its subjugation by the Macedonians, had been approximately two 
thousand years. 



NOTES. 83 

27. The fable, which is published in the miscellaneous collection of 
ancient apologues known as ^sop's Fables, is as follows : — 

"A man and a lion travelled together through the forest. They soon 
began to boast of their respective superiority to each other in strength 
and prowess. As they were disputing they passed a statue, carved in 
stone, which represented a Lion strangled by a Man. The traveller 
pointed to it and said: 'See there! how strong we are and how we 
prevail over even the king of beasts.' The Lion replied : ' This statue 
was made by one of you men. If we Lions knew how to erect statues, 
you would see the man placed under the paw of the Lion.' " 

38. 21. Laud believed in a church deriving its authority from St. 
Peter through the Episcopal succession, and attempted to enforce con- 
formity to the ritual of the Church of England (in respect to the use of 
a specified clerical dress, of specified postures in worship, etc.), not only 
upon the churches throughout England, but also upon those of the 
entirely distinct kingdom of Scotland. In this attempt he did not 
scruple to make use of the arbitrary " Court of High Commission," a 
body execrated by Parliament and people for its illegal exercise of 
power. 

39. 2. At the time this essay was written, Macaulay's sympathies were 
deeply enlisted in behalf of the struggle being waged by the Liberals in 
English politics, for the abolition of the legal restrictions regarding 
Catholics which had remained on the statute books from the days when 
fear of a Catholic tyranny had driven the nation to an extreme of anti- 
Catholic frenzy. He here departs from his main theme to attack the 
Conservatives in English politics, who resist any change in the political 
status of Catholics. He says that these persons, being Tories, deplore 
the Revolution of 1688 because of its violation cf the doctrine of Divine 
Right, and of the principle of Legitimacy; but they applaud the laws 
against Catholics passed under the " usurper" William III., and strenu- 
ously resist any attempt to repeal them. Thus they "find in the great 
actions of former times only an excuse for existing abuses." 

19. This sect was the Catholics, who were looked upon in 1689 
as being ever ready to seize upon the first opportunity to restore the 
Stuarts to the throne, and thus fasten upon England a Catholic tyranny. 
Especially was this true of the Irish, who had never relaxed in their 
loyalty to the Stuarts, and who, consequently, were now crushed under 
the most severe laws. 

27. In 1825 the rulers of Naples and of Spain held their thrones 
through the aid of the " Holy Alliance " of European Powers, headed by 
Austria, which was pledged to the support of absolute monarchs against 
democratic uprisings. In South America, the Spanish colonies had 
succeeded in throwing off the yoke of Spain, and the proposal that the 



84 NOTES. 

Holy Alliance should interfere to restore to the Spanish monarch his 
legitimate rights in America had met with favor at the hands of the 
English extreme Tories. Thus the doctrine of Divine Right, which 
had suffered transportation with the Stuarts, had come back " under the 
alias of Legitimacy." 

40. 13. This reference has been almost universally explained by 
annotators as applying to Ferdinand of Aragon (1452-1516) and Fred- 
erick of the Palatinate (1596-1632) ; but they fail to show in what way 
these monarchs illustrate his point, which is that the Tories of 1825 
uphold even tyrants on the ground of Legitimacy, no matter how 
extreme are their acts. Now, in 1825, two Catholic " Ferdinands " were 
ruling in Spain and Naples respectively, having been rejected by their 
oppressed subjects, and been restored by the Holy Alliance against 
which Macaulay has just been animadverting; while on the throne of 
Prussia was a Protestant "Frederick," who had joined the Holy Alli- 
ance in maintaining the principle of Legitimacy, and had balked his 
own people in their desire for a written constitution. Is it not more 
likely that these were the facts that lay in Macaulay's mind when he was 
writing the passage ? 

42. 25. This interesting and ingenious catalogue of evils presents 
an aspect of the "glorious Revolution" not often so frankly set forth. 
The " disputed succession " made the seats of the Hanoverian mon- 
archs insecure for half a century; the earliest monarchs of that race 
understood neither the English language nor the English temper; the 
endeavor to preserve to the Hanoverians their continental possessions 
entangled England in twenty years of war; and these inevitably brought 
in their train a standing army and a national debt. 

43. 28. The formula " Le Roi le veut," by which the King indorsed 
his assent upon the Bills enacted by Parliament, exhibits in the language 
in which it is expressed an interesting reminder of the. days when the 
victorious Normans wrought into the fabric of English political and 
legal institutions their own forms and usages. The reference is to the 
contest over the Petition of Right (see p. xix.) to which Charles had 
attempted to- give a modified assent (by altering the phrase usually 
appended by the monarch when granting petitions), so as to reserve 
his right to exercise his "prerogative," a right upon which the whole 
struggle centred. He finally signed the Petition with the usual formula 
for granting petitions, " Soit droit fait comme il est desire," thus appar- 
ently relinquishing the claim to exercise his prerogative, and thereby 
"cozening" the Parliament; for he still adhered to it in practice. 
(Macaulay apparently fails to discriminate between the formula for 
Bills and that for Petitions.) 



NOTES. 85 

46. 4. It was to gain a grant of a subsidy from Parliament that 
Charles had made the concession stated in the preceding note. 

47. 4. In the original draft published in 1825 this sentence ended 
with the words, " Crouch beneath the sceptres of Brandenburgh and 
Braganza." Macaulay thus entered another protest against the doctrine 
of Absolutism (see note to p. 40, 1. 13). But by the year 1849 (when the 
text was revised) political conditions in Europe had so changed that 
these names no longer stood for the tyranny of a master over his slaves. 

49. 14. Macaulay is referring especially to the French Revolution, 
the memory of the horrors of that outrage on the name of Liberty being 
still fresh in the minds of many of his readers in 1825. 

50. 27. The persons most active in securing the execution of 
Charles I., including Cromwell, Bradshaw, Ireton, etc., and, indeed, the 
entire 167 members of the " high court " which condemned him to 
death, are known to history as the " Regicides," a name given them by 
the Royalists in condemnation of their extra-legal act. 

51. 25. On the landing of William of Orange at Torbay, James II. 
sent Colonel Churchill, afterward the Duke of Marlborough, to stay 
his march eastward ; but Churchill went over with his troops to the side 
of William. Surrounded by traitors, James fled from London on De- 
cember 11, 1688, toward the seacoast, but having been prevented by 
some fishermen from taking ship for France, he returned to London, 
and took up his residence at his palace of Whitehall. But William, in 
his character of " Protector of the Protestant liberties of England," con- 
tinued to advance upon London, and sent imperative orders to James 
to leave London. James again fled on December 18, and this time 
obtained transportation to France. One of his daughters, Mary, was 
the wife of his nephew William, and his other daughter, Anne, who was 
a Protestant, cast her lot with the champion of that faith. 

51. 27. Nov. 5, 1688, William of Orange landed at Torbay. 

52. 1. Jan. 30, 1649, Charles II. was executed. 

53. 10. The quotation is from Virgil's AZneid, X. 830. /Eneas, 
having mortally wounded an opponent, consoles him with the thought 
that he has fallen by the hand of no mean foe, but by the " right hand 
of great .Eneas." 

58. 1. Charles II. having escaped his pursuers by hiding in an oak 
tree after the battle of Worcester, oak branches were used by the Jaco- 
bites as symbolic decorations on anniversaries associated with the for- 
tunes of the Stuarts ; calves' heads, on the other hand, were served at 
the annual banquet of the Calves' Head Club (anti- Jacobin), so gar- 
nished as to symbolize the follies and outrages perpetrated by Charles I. 



86 NOTES. 

25. The principal "laugher" was Dr. Samuel Butler, author of a 
satirical poem, Hudibras, which set forth the ridiculous aspects of 
Puritanism in a masterly manner. The introduction of this poem 
should be consulted for its ludicrous treatment of every topic men- 
tioned in Macaulay's list. 

59. 6. The application of this quotation may be made most clearly 
apparent by the following somewhat free rendering : " This is the source 
of laughter, and likewise the stream which bears within itself dire 
perils : here especially should we curb our inclination, and be careful." 

61. 18. This sentence refers to the wonders attending the death of 
Christ, as depicted in Matthew xxvii. 51-53, and Luke xxiii. 44, 45. 

61. 30. The " millennial year " was a phrase employed by the Fifth- 
monarchy Men (see Index) to express the age, of indefinite length, 
during which the anticipated reign of Christ upon earth would endure. 

66. 26. When Ulysses visited Circe to gain certain directions for 
his journey to the under-world, he was provided by Hermes with an 
herb which destroyed the potency of the enchanted cup with which she 
endeavored to overcome him and change him to a beast. 

67. 4. The passage referred to is as follows : — 

" But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
And love the high embowed roof, 
With antique pillars massy-proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light. 
There let the pealing organ blow 
To the full-voiced choir below, 
In service high and anthems clear, 
As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 
Dissolve me into ecstasies 
And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 

II Penseroso, 155+ . 

68. 1. The quotation expresses the plight of the brothers of the lady 
in Comus, when they have driven away the wizard, but find their sister 
still motionless in the chair (see note on p. 33, 1. 17). 

27. The reference is to Milton's Sonnet XVI. .(Milton's Minor 
Poems; Heath). 

TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL. 

" Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud 
Not of war only, but detractions rude, 
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, 
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed. . . . 



NOTES. 87 

And on the back of crowned Fortune proud 
Hast reared God's trophies and his work pursued, 
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued, 
And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, 
And Worcester's laureate wreath : yet much remains 
To conquer still ; Peace hath her victories 
No less renowned than War: new foes arise, 
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. 
Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 

69. 2. The reference is to Milton's Areopagitica, or a Speech for the 
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, published in 1644, and reckoned among 
the noblest of his prose works. 

70. 5. The quotation is from Ovid's Metamorphoses, II. 72+. 
The deity of the sun, describing his daily journey through the sky savs 
(in effect) : — 

" I have a severe struggle (i.e. to hold my own against the sweep of 
the heavenly bodies in their courses) , yet the force that controls the other 
bodies does not overmaster me, and I make my way in my chariot in a 
direction contrary to the swift revolution of the celestial sphere." 

71. 26. Milton's blindness, in his later years, compelled him to have 
recourse to readers and to amanuenses ; but there would have been no 
"contest" with his daughters had Macaulay been "transported a hun- 
dred years back"; for it will be remembered that Milton's daughters 
showed so plainly their revolt from the drudgery of their task of " read- 
ing and exactly pronouncing the language of whatever book he thought 
fit to peruse, viz. the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Latin, the 
Italian, Spanish, and French," 1 that Milton was led practically to disin- 
herit them in his will, as undutiful children. 

72. 20. The Virgin Martyr, Dorothea, is put to death by a persecutor 
of the Christians, and having ascended to Paradise, sne sends an angelic 
messenger to her persecutor, bearing a basket of heavenly fruit °and 
flowers. The celestial odor and flavor of the gift prove their divine 
origin, and the persecutor is converted to Christianity by the miracle, 
and suffers martyrdom in his turn at the order of the Emperor Diocle- 
tian. 

1 Edward Philips, nephew of Milton. 



NOTES, CRITICAL AND SUGGESTIVE. 



In the earlier portion of these notes especial attention is paid to the 
element of structure, while in the later portion the notes are limited to 
suggestions in regard to general literary features, in the expectation that 
by the time the pupil has reached this part of the essay he will have 
gained sufficient training to enable him to observe for himself the struc- 
tural features of the work. 

I. Introduction. 

UH 1-7. The Occasion of the Essay. 

Observe the opening sentence of each of the seven paragraphs. The 
first (p. 1, 11. 1-4) announces the subject of Part I. of the essay, although 
it piques the curiosity of the reader by not definitely connecting the 
newly discovered manuscript with the title of the essay until a few sen- 
tences later. Observe that the first sentence is periodic ; i.e. the closing 
words are the vital ones, containing the specific subject of thought. 
Note that this is especially the subject of page 1. 

Do the opening sentences of the others perform a similar function for 
their respective portions ? Then how may a reader train himself to 
retain the chief contents of a well-written article, and how review it most 
profitably ? 

2. 10-16. Observe the care with which Macaulay's general assertion 
in regard to the excellence of Mr. Sumner's work is verified by these 
specific statements (1. 23). Test the suggestiveness of the epithet " aca- 
demical " as applied to the Pharisees in literature, by consulting the Index 
under Academy (1. 28). Note the felicity of touch in using a phrase of 
literary criticism from Milton's own pen to adorn a passage dealing 
with Milton's style. 

3. 8-1 1. Be careful to observe, as you read further, whether the 
qualities here attributed to Milton are those upon which Macaulay lays 
stress in the body of his essay, and, therefore, whether this statement is 
designedly preparatory to what follows, or merely casual (1. 30). Is 
there an important difference in the meaning of converted and perverted 
as applied to changes of religious belief? How does the distinction 
here implied emphasize the contrast of orthodox and heretical in lines 27 
and 28 ? Note the suggestion in the word quartos of the days when 
ponderous controversial works abounded. 

88 



NOTES. 89 

4. 10-26. This paragraph affords good illustrations of the use of an 
ascending series, or climax, and of anticipatory suggestion. The relics 
(1. 15+) rise in dignity from an external reminder to a vital element; 
the memorable aspects of Milton's life and character (1. 24+) rise, 
especially in the manner of presentation, from the commonplace (because 
inevitable) ascription of " genius " to the sounding title of " champion and 
martyr of English liberty," a title appealing with special force in the year 
1825 to the heart of that English party to which Macaulay adhered. 
Furthermore, the titles here rehearsed indicate the several aspects in 
which Milton is to be viewed in this essay, and the general order in 
which they will be treated. Is the illustration from the Capuchins (1. 12) 
suggestive? That is, do the phrases life and miracles of a sai?it, drops 
of his blood, and devotional feelings apply, if only remotely, to Milton, to 
the De Doctrina Christiana, and to the readers of this essay, respec- 
tively ? 

Note that these seven paragraphs constitute the entire book review 
which Macaulay is professedly writing, and that the volume reviewed is 
not again referred to until the essay is practically completed. (Where is 
it again mentioned ?) This shadowy pretence of reviewing a book (the 
hollowness of which is admitted in paragraph 7) is characteristic of 
Macaulay. 

II. The Essay Proper. A Study of Milton's Career. 

A. MILTON'S POETICAL WORK. 

Iffl 8-9. The Grounds of his Fame. 

5. 27. Here begins the body of the essay, which treats first of 
Milton's poetic work (UH 8 to 49) and then of his political career (HIT 50 
to 89). The first subdivision of this portion devoted to his poetry is a 
preliminary discussion, forming Macaulay's contribution to the theory of 
the poetic art. He enunciates and attempts to demonstrate two main 
theses, one in paragraph 10 on the genesis of the poetic gift, the other in 
paragraph 17 on the operation of the poetic faculty. Then he 'applies 
these abstract propositions to the specific case of Milton. Has Macau- 
lay, in paragraph 8, set up a man of straw for his own purposes ? I.e. 
have critics decried Milton's original powers to the extent which Macaulay 
would imply (p. 5, 11. 2-17) ? And would he deliberately maintain that 
the age of Pope, or his own age, offered to the poet more favorable cir- 
cumstances than that of Milton (11. 18-21) ? Observe how the punctua- 
tion of the sentences in lines 3 to 17 breaks them into choppy portions. 
Can they be reconstructed so as to flow more smoothly, without losing 
force ? Observe, (1) in the first sentence of paragraph 9, an example of 
Macaulay's habit of making extreme assertions to compel attention, and 
of allowing the particular case before him at any given time to seem 



go NOTES. 

unique and quite beyond ordinary experience; (2) in lines 24, 25, his 
skill in suggesting by the phrases the poet . . . the critic the difference in 
native temper of mind that makes it clear why Milton and Johnson 
should adopt the different opinions expressed in the preceding sentences ; 
(3) the forceful construction of this sentence, with its antithetical words in 
the most emphatic positions, and as far apart as possible; and (4) the 
impressive effect of the ample closing sentence (11. 26-30), following 
upon three short ones and ending with its balanced pairs, He knew . . . 
and he looked back ; from the civilization which . . . or from the learning 
which ; of simple words . . . and vivid impressions. 

HH 10-20. Philosophical Digression from the Main Theme. 

6. 1-13. This paragraph is devoted to expounding a theorem re- 
garding opposite changes-; note how the effect of a balance or opposition 
of parts is maintained through the successive sentences. Where in this 
paragraph is there another of Macaulay's extreme statements ? By what 
epithet does he attempt to cast ridicule upon those who do not accept his 
theory (11. 14-30) ? Here two of Macaulay's characteristics are exem- 
plified ; first, his copiousness and vigor of expression enforcing an asser- 
tion ; and secondly, his habit of attributing to " every schoolboy " (or 
girl) and to every " intelligent man " almost encyclopaedic knowledge, in 
the endeavor to make his statements impressive. Consider, for exam- 
ple, the work of Halifax in creating the Bank of England, and the scope 
of his knowledge of financial conditions in their relations to public and 
private enterprises, and judge whether the principles and facts which 
determined his action were all set forth within the pages of " Mrs. 
Marcet's little dialogues." 

7. 4+. In paragraphs 12 and 13, Macaulay characteristically takes 
one particular tool of the poet, the specif c expression, and exalts it to the 
temporary exclusion of all other considerations. In his argument he 
assumes that poetry is poetry solely as it is constituted of a series of suc- 
cessive particular linages (11. 21-22), either embodied in single words or 
in expressions conceived as units. But it might be maintained with equal 
success that the greatest poetry is that which contains the most numerous 
generalizations.; that in Shakespeare's work, for example, the portions 
that live most freshly in men's minds are the generalizations, and these, 
too, expressed wholly in abstract terms. Furthermore, could lago (p. 8, 
1. 12) have been created had not Shakespeare conceived him, not merely 
as an individual, but also as a type ? And is it not because every one of 
the dramatist's notable characters is the embodiment of a class and not 
a particular individual only, that he continues to interest successive gen- 
erations of readers ? And again, is it not true that the variety of irfiages 
which each age offers to the poet for his use is greater than that offered 
by any previous age ? [It is worth while for the pupil to form thetabit 



NOTES. 



9i 



of scrutinizing each of Macaulay's principal assertions of theory some- 
what in the foregoing manner, because the training which enables a man 
to discover and lay bare the sophistry or the inadequacy of a brilliant, 
but inexact "pronunciamento" like those of Macaulay is most valuable 
in all phases of life. He should learn first instinctively to question the 
truth of the imagery which perhaps distorts the fact : " Is language the 
machine of the poet (p. 7, 1. 10+) or is it the material to be shaped with 
the aid of the machine, or both ? " Secondly, he should question the truth 
of the fact itself: " If words be the machines, or tools, of the poet, is it 
possible to conceive of a machine that is best fitted for its purpose in its 
rudest state " (1. 11) ? [This process will inevitably lead to clearer think- 
ing-] 

In the statement beginning on line 22, are both the positive and the 
negative assertions equally true, or do men besides classifying more uni- 
versally, also scrutinize more accurately the individuals of each class ? 
Can men classify objects at all without examining particular objects ? 

8. 16-19. This sentence practically asserts that the operation of one 
of the primary faculties of the mind is a mark of the unsoundness of that 
mind. Test this statement in the manner suggested above. Is the defini- 
tion of poetry beginning in line 23 adequate to cover all the poems in a 
standard course in literature ? 

9. 7, 8. Note the epigrammatic character of the sentence. Is the 
word " credulity" (1. 11) properly used ? If " imagination " were substi- 
tuted for it, what would be the effect on the argument ? Does the illus- 
tration (1. 17+) legitimately enforce his point? That is, if the reader 
of Hamlet could be " credulous " enough to be affected by it as the child 
is affected by the tale of Red Riding-hood, would he be more keenly 
feeling or appreciating the poetry of the drama ? In line 12, where should 
the word " almost" be placed ? In paragraph 16, Macaulay continues 
his confusion of the poetic imagination with the poetic temperatnent. 
The former is one element that goes to make up the latter, but so also 
are aesthetic sensitiveness to rhythm and to physical beauty, and (though 
this has been disputed) sensitiveness to ideals of truth and virtue. The 
paragraph is well constructed, beginning with a general statement, en- 
forcing this by repetition in specific forms, and ending with an echo of 
the same idea, as a summary. It may be questioned whether the effects 
he describes were produced upon the early Greeks, the Mohawks, and 
the Welsh bards by the poetry as poetry. 

10. 19. He now formally propounds the thesis already indirectly 
announced, developing his theory of the decline of poetic inspiration 
with advancing civilization. Is his illustration sound, as a basis for 
argument? Granting that the poem and the lantern alike produce 
an illusion ; does the dark room stand in the same relation to the illusion 
on tl - eye that the dark ages sustain to the mental illusion (1. 31) ? 



92 NOTES. 

Note the epigrammatic form of the opening sentence of paragraph 18, 
and the exuberance of expression with which it is amplified. The clos- 
ing reference (p. n, 11. 11-16) might well be applied to Wordsworth, 
who failed, in certain portions of his work, simply because he endeavored 
to" become a little child" (1. 1). In paragraph 19 Macaulay returns 
from his digression, to apply its central theory to Milton. The return is 
clearly indicated in the opening sentence, but the application is weak. 
He rehearses Milton's attainments in the lines of classical culture, but 
fails to show that the poet found them to be "difficulties" in his par- 
ticular work, or how he "triumphed" over them, — being led astray by 
his desire to refute another of Johnson's critical judgments. The simile 
in which he disposes of Johnson's claim to be a critic of classical Latin 
is characteristic of Macaulay in its vigor and its appositeness. 

12. 6+. This paragraph deserves study for the splendor of its 
adornment, which grows richer as the paragraph proceeds. Note how 
effective is this burst of eloquence, introduced at the end of a disserta- 
tion for the purpose of inducing the reader to accept the writer's theory 
by causing him to lose, temporarily, the critical attitude in the warmth 
of the admiration thus evoked. 

UU 21-49. A Critique of Milton's Poetry. 

13. 8. Having exalted the reader's opinion of Milton by showing 
him to be great in spite of circumstances, Macaulay now proceeds to a 
critical examination of Milton's poetical works, first considering the 
qualities common to all, and then proceeding to the individual poems, 
in the general order of their production. Paragraph 21 serves to create 
expectation by exalting the merits of the works to be considered, yet dis- 
arms criticism by the modesty of the claims advanced for the writer. 
Note how the sentence beginning in line 9, by its length, its harmonious 
balance of parts, its use of climax, dignifies the subject of which it 
treats, and how the succeeding ones sink into insignificance, in harmony 
with the thought. Macaulay's main assertion in paragraph 22 is pro- 
foundly true ; and the failure of the untrained reader to "fill up the out- 
lines " sketched by Milton (p. 14, 1. 7) is accountable for his limited 
enjoyment of the great poet's work. To illustrate : The poet describes 
the arch-fiend Satan as moving toward the shore of the lake in Hell, dimly 
visible through the dusky atmosphere, — 

..." his ponderous shield, 

Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 

Behind him cast. The broad circumference 

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb 

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 

At evening, from the top of Fesole, t 

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 

Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe." — P. L. I. 284 ■+. 



NOTES. 93 

Now, if the reader's mind be cooperating actively with the poet, instead 
of playing the part of " a mere passive listener " (p. 14, 1. 6) , every touch 
in this description will convey remote suggestions to him. The expres- 
sion " ethereal temper " will suggest that the shield (like all substances 
made of the fiery essence, or ether) would glow with a radiance of its 
own, so as to be visible in the gloom of Hell at some distance. But, 
like all heavenly substances (including that of which Satan's body was 
made), its glory had been dimmed by the base uses to which it had been 
put, and every blow received in the recent combat with God's forces had 
left in it ah ineffaceable dint or scar. This the poet whispers to those 
who have ears to hear, in his references to the moon's " spotty globe," 
seen " at evening " when its pure golden light is changed to a coppery, 
sullen red by atmospheric conditions at its rising. And, too, the size of 
the shield is magnified for those who have the eyes of poetic imagination 
to look at it through the " optic glass " of the " Tuscan artist " ; while 
Satan's mighty frame, the grandeur of which is often impressed upon the 
reader of the poem, is here expanded to the bulk of the mountain that, 
like Satan's shoulders, hides a portion of the brilliant orb from the 
observer in the vale of the Arno. Such examples of suggestions might 
be culled indefinitely from Milton's poems. 

Thus Macaulay's main assertion about Milton's characteristics as a 
poet appears to be well founded ; but observe how his love of forceful 
expression leads him to make an absolutely absurd hyperbole in the 
sentence on p. 14, 11. 8, 9. 

14. 10 +. Paragraphs 23 and 24 furnish examples of Macaulay's 
richness of diction and copiousness of expreasion. Every device of the 
skilful writer — repetition, enlargement, alteration of the point of view, 
change from the abstract to the concrete, illustration, suggestion, and 
poetic imagery — is employed within the limits of these two paragraphs. 
In the closing sentence of paragraph 24, Macaulay was clearly endeavor- 
ing to create the same spell by suggestive " muster rolls " of objects 
endeared to the reader, that he attributes to Milton's lists of names 
(11. 21-23). ^ s usual the two minor poems are held to exhibit in a 
superlative degree the qualities under consideration. It is interesting 
to see Macaulay claiming for the " mechanism of language " in these 
(thoroughly polished and civilized) poems an effectiveness which he has 
asserted is possible to a language only in its ruder states. And it is also 
interesting to note his attempts to make his exaggeration pass unques- 
tioned by dazzling the mind with an epigram at the end of the paragraph 
(p. i6,ll. 1, 2). 

16. 3+. The discussion in paragraphs 26-28 is of a nature too 
technical to convey a clear and lasting impression to the mind of a pupil 
unacquainted with the classic drama, and there being so much material of 
greater value to be treated, it may be passed over without intensive study. 



94 NOTES. 

It is sufficient for the pupil to note its central dictum, that the Samson, 
in attempting to combine dramatic and lyric elements, loses the unity of 
impression that would make it either a successful drama or a successful 
ode, and that Milton was led into this error by following a faulty model, 
Euripides. Technically the whole passage lacks smoothness of transition 
between its parts, and clearness and directness in its demonstration. 

19. 54+. The superlative is again invoked for the Comus, both in 
the opening sentence of the general criticism (11. 7,8), and in the closing 
metaphor (11. 23-26). But it is not true that the work is flawless, except 
on the condition implied in the statement that it is " essentially lyrical, 
and dramatic only in semblance " (11. 28-30). The speeches are in no 
way differentiated from the different characters, and (in view of the fact 
that the Comus was written for presentation on the stage) it maybe ques- 
tioned whether this lack of character painting and the excessive length 
of the speeches do not constitute blemishes in the workmanship of the 
author. In p. 20, 11. 19-29, Macaulay again resorts to the device of drawing 
his illustration from the author under discussion, and here he ingeniously 
relies upon that author for the very phrases which enrich his language. 

21. 1-17. A transition paragraph, linking back with its first sentence 
to the class of poems already examined (Macaulay should say " several 
more " or "several others among" the minor poems), and forward with 
its closing sentence to the masterpiece next to be discussed. His exalta- 
tion of the Paradise Regained, as being superior " to every poem which 
has since made its appearance," would carry more conviction had it been 
supported by some examination of the work of Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Campbell, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and 
Keats, all of whom had produced notable works before the date of this 
essay. For it is to be noted that Macaulay does not qualify his statement 
by limiting the comparative estimate to poems of the same class or the 
same length, and one is led to speculate as to what may be the standard of 
judgment which he here applies. In lines 18 and 19 the critic again fails 
to qualify his statement sufficiently for accuracy. From the last sentence 
of the preceding paragraph we are led to suppose that this opening sen- 
tence is intended to exalt the poetic genius of Milton above that of all 
modern writers except Dante. Using the expression " can be compared " 
in its full scope, Macaulay tacitly implies that in native powers, in excel- 
lence of workmanship, in profundity of thought, in weight of subject, 
and in influence upon the world's thought and expression, the authors of 
the two works mentioned are unapproached. But Shakespeare exhibited 
as great poetic gifts, although he did not employ them in the composition 
of an epic; Spenser's epic, The Faerie Queene, although unfinished, has 
moulded the expression of all succeeding English poets ; and Goethe's 
Faust, the first part of which was published in 1808, has giyen him a 
right to dispute precedence with either Dante or Milton. 



NOTES. 



95 



Is the expression " the subject of Milton " ( 1. 20) felicitously phrased ? 
Is the sentence (11. 21-23) clearly expressed ? Is the word " illustrate " 
(1. 23) well chosen ? Is the phrase " father of Tuscan literature " (em- 
ployed to avoid repeating the name Dante) well chosen to suggest the 
greatness of Dante's work ? That is, did his fame rest in any marked 
degree on his being thejirst writer to employ the Italian tongue for poetic 
composition with marked success ? In lines 25-28, the illustration 
employed hardly lends clearness, because of its recondite character. 
Even readers of considerable culture and wide information may be 
excused for not knowing that in the Mexican scheme of picture-writing 
the representation of an eagle (for example) really stands for an eagle, 
whereas in the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing it is merely a symbol to 
indicate the letter a. Furthermore, the application of the illustration is 
confused by a' reversal of the order of ideas. The hieroglyphic, or 
abstract symbol, is mentioned first in the simile proper; but in its appli- 
cation, Dante, who employs concrete representation by images, is placed 
first. 

22. The punctuation of the sentence in lines 7 to 13 is not satisfac- 
tory according to modern standards. In lines 16 to 20, the illustrations 
are not introduced in such a manner as to show their function and 
bearing. Taken altogether this is a somewhat carelessly constructed 
paragraph. 

24. 3-12. An example of parallel construction. Does it illustrate 
climax ? Note the typical character of the three references in lines 9-11. 

25. 3 +. A transitional paragraph intended to prepare the way for 
the discussion of the original theory propounded by Macaulay in lines 
16-31. Observe the length of the sentences. The object of the writer is 
to impress *ipon the reader, by a series of sharp and, therefore, brief 
statements, the impossibility of expressing adequately man's ideas of the 
supernatural. 

26. 1 +. Observe the imperfect connection with the previous para- 
graph, and the failure to indicate the subject of this. Note the chrono- 
logical succession in the schools of religious thought here mentioned, 
producing climax by a final reference (11. 25-28) to the Christian faith, 
which would appeal to the sympathies of his hearers (11. 29-31). Note the 
force given by the definite words, synagogue, portico, and liclor in place 
of more general terms. This paragraph would seem too long for a mere 
digression, designed to illustrate one phase of the truth Macaulay is 
attempting to prove. 

27. 18-20. An example of Macaulay's commonest fault (1. 21)? 
A well-constructed paragraph ; the sentence, however, is incorrectly 
punctuated. Trace throughout the paragraph the constant use of an- 
tithesis in single sentences, and in pairs of sentences. I 

28. 31 +. Macaulay here adduces proof from specific classes of facts 



96 NOTES. 

in the work of the two poets, but the opening sentenee fails to indicate 
what topic is to be treated in this paragraph. Macaulay also is tempted 
to detract from the excellence of Dante's work in order to exalt that of 
Milton in the succeeding paragraph. 

30. 8+. Observe how in this paragraph the language rises in dig- 
nity to harmonize with the character of the work of yEschylus which is 
being described. Notice how the movement is made rhythmic by the 
pairs of nouns and adjectives : amenity and elegance, Goddess of light 
and goddess of desire, huge and grotesque labyrinths, etc. Note the cli- 
max in the closing sentence, which by its length, by its diction (largely 
borrowed by Milton), and by the order of expression, keeps the attention 
unrelaxed until its closing phrase. 

31. 19 +. A paragraph wholly untrue tc fact. Let the pupil trace 
in the works of Milton the references to his own personal experiences, 
and especially to his religious beliefs and sympathies. 

32. 1 +. The opening sentence is misleading as to the character 
of the paragraph. Recast it so as to avoid indicating that Milton's char- 
acter is to be treated therein. (1. 27.) A statement thoroughly mislead- 
ing ; there is no evidence that Milton ever had any experience as a lover in 
any way kin to Dante's. He married " in haste to repent at leisure." 
And the assertion in p. 33, 1. 20+, is wholly false. Macaulay is led 
into this misstatement by his love for contrast, and the same desire for 
rhetorical effects leads to the exaggeration in the closing sentence of the 
paragraph. 

34. 5-9. At what age did Milton write the Paradise Lost? Is it 
true that at that age images of beauty and tenderness are beginning to 
fade (1. 19 + )? Is the simile suggestive and closely applicable as well as 
beautiful and forceful (1. 24 + )? This tribute to the merit of the son- 
nets is well deserved. They should be studied carefully by every student 
of Milton. 

35. 27. The conclusion of the first part of the essay, devoted to 
Milton's work as a literary man. 

B. MILTON'S POLITICAL CAREER. 

HU 50-72. Preliminary Study of the Great Rebellion. 

36. 1 +. This opening sentence forms an artificial transition from 
Milton's poetical work to his political career. The paragraph is intended 
to create expectancy by dignifying the subject now to be treated, and 
by so presenting it as to appeal to the sympathies of the English readers 
of Macaulay's day (1. 5). Note how the words Oromasdes and Arimanes, 
by their impressive sound and unfamiliar aspect, increase the literary 
effect of the sentence, and how the scriptural language in lines 16 and 17 
continues this effect (1. 18). This paragraph, in contrast with the pre- 



NOTES. 97 

ceding one, aims to belittle the work of other critics of the period, and 
thus prepare the way for the favorable reception of Macaulay's judg- 
ments upon men and events. 

37. 22+. The first sentence announces a digression upon the ques- 
tion of whether the Great Rebellion was justified by the acts of Charles 
Stuart, a digression which is protracted for twenty-one paragraphs. The 
assertion, then, that "in the answer to this question is involved one's 
judgment of the public conduct of Milton " should be weighed with great 
care (1. 31). Note the shrewd assumption that the writer does not need 
all his arguments to prove his case. 

38. 7 +. To what body of English politicians does Macaulay appeal 
in the argument thus introduced (11. 17-21) . These superlatives, although 
characteristic, are here perhaps intended to forestall charges that Macau- 
lay was in sympathy with Catholicism, a charge to which the following 
three paragraphs might give color (1. 25 +) . This and the following para- 
graph are wholly out of place, being merely an attack upon Macaulay's 
opponents in the pending struggle in regard to Catholic emancipation. 
They exhibit bad taste, exaggeration, and intemperate passion, together 
with that obscurity of expression which naturally accompanies lack of 
restraint. 

40. 20-23. A characteristic Macaulayan exaggeration. 

41. 1 +. Macaulay's favorite device of antithesis (11. 3-6). A mis- 
representation of facts. The vital assertion in the Declaration was that 
James had " abdicated the throne" (11. 6-9). A misleading statement 
of the question at issue. The question is not whether resistance is justi- 
fied, but to what lengths that resistance may go. 

41. 12 +. This paragraph exhibits faulty argumentation, professing 
to prove from the admissions of Charles his breach of the fundamental 
laws of the kingdom. It quotes the testimony of historians to prove his 
acts to have been oppressive, and to have violated the Declaration of 
Right. It would have been far more effective to refer to Magna Charta 
rather than to a document formulated after Charles's death. 

42. 8+. An effectively constructed paragraph. After presenting 
the cause of Charles in a series of terse sentences, Macaulay moves for- 
ward to a scathing denunciation of his faults, ending in a sentence which 
proceeds to an effective climax. 

43. 7+. Having apparently fully demonstrated the truth of his 
assertion, Macaulay artfully adduces apparently superfluous arguments 
with the effect of strengthening the conviction of the reader. To prove 
that Charles was even worse than James, he abandons general charges 
and quotes a specific instance of his treachery. This instance he pre- 
sents in a picture drawn in the present tense to make it more vivid (1. 20). 
This sentence is skilfully constructed to sum up the faults of which 
Charles had been charged, and creates an anticipation of the inference 



98 NOTES. 

to be drawn in concluding the argument ; and the entire paragraph 
merely recapitulates in briefest form the points on which Macaulay relies 
to secure conviction. 

44. 9 +. This and the following paragraph illustrate Macaulay's 
extraordinary power of sarcasm, and Macaulay, as usual, has recourse 
to the device of antithesis. The pupil should test for himself whether 
the two halves of the antithesis fairly present the respective positions of 
the advocates and the defenders of Charles, or whether they have rhetori- 
cal value only. 

45 +. Paragraphs 63, 64, 65 appear to be purposely written in a 
simple, quiet style, in order to form a suitable transition from the denun- 
ciation of Charles to the ridicule of the Puritan excesses in paragraph 66. 

46. 30. This assumption of the insignificance of the excesses is rhe- 
torically effective, but it is mere artifice ; .else Macaulay would not devote 
four paragraphs to explaining away or condoning those excesses. 

47. 11 +. Perhaps no portion of the essay contains more ingenious 
argument than this, on the relation of popular excesses to the character 
of the government amid which they sprang up ; but while Macaulay's 
position may be true in the abstract, it is doubtful whether the excesses 
of the Puritans were not in part due to extraordinary causes entirely 
apart from the tyranny of the Stuarts. 

48. 5 +. The numerous figures in this paragraph and the two fol- 
lowing illustrate the excessive ornamentation which Macaulay himself 
condemned. 

HH 73-89. 'Milton's Attitude toward Questions and Parties. 

50. 11 +. Macaulay, having defended the Rebellion on general 
principles, now returns to the discussion of Milton's relation to it, and 
relies perhaps too much upon the argument from analogy with the glori- 
ous Revolution of 1688 which has already been used to excess. 

51. 1-10. The use of question and answer is but a disguised form 
of Macaulay's favorite device of antithetical contrasts (11. 17-25). A 
finely constructed periodic sentence, but a very misleading one. While 
every detail may be verified, almost every one is so stated as to misrep- 
resent the issue. 

52. 3 +. This paragraph exemplifies Macaulay's love of producing 
sensational effect by defending a paradox. When we consider the re- 
strictions put upon the monarch at the restoration of Charles II., and the 
determination of the English people not to part with the liberty bought 
by the struggle against his father, which was demonstrated by the Revo- 
lution of 1688, it would seem a difficult task to demonstrate that the 
"Great Rebellion" was most injurious to the cause of freedom. Mac- 
aulay's position in the next paragraph is equally untenable. Any blame 
which the Regicides deserved, Milton should have shared. 



NOTES. 



99 



55. 24-27. In praising the institutions established by Cromwell, 
Macaulay presents all their admirable features, but ignores the religious 
tyranny from which they were as inseparable as was the Stuart govern- 
ment from its own form of religious tyranny. 

56. 5-8. Are these events a vindication of the Cromwell regime, 
or are they a proof that the institutions then created were wholly faulty 
(1. 18 +) ? Perhaps the most celebrated paragraph in the essay, from the 
splendid figurative richness of the expression, which increases in intensity 
and bitterness of denunciation to a perfect climax. It exhibits Macaulay 's 
rhetorical powers at their best, but his critical judgment at its poorest. 

57. 9 +. A transitional paragraph, intended to introduce a digression 
upon political parties, which will offer Macaulay an opportunity to exhibit 
his great powers of character painting (11. 26-30). An illustration of 
the force to be gained by specific instead of general expressions. 

58. 5. The portion of the essay from paragraphs 80 to 85 is 
justly celebrated for its graphic delineation of the character of the 
Puritans. It is not marked by excessive insistence upon purely pictu- 
resque traits, but is a serious, impartial presentation of their character. 
It should be made a subject of minute analysis by the pupil, as an object 
lesson in orderly structural arrangement, in the progressive, uplifting, 
and ennobling of the subject treated, and in the art of graphic presenta- 
tion by generalization, by the use of specific details, by judicious illustra- 
tion, and especially by suggestion conveyed through language capable 
of calling up associated ideas in the mind. 

65. 20 +. This character study of Milton from paragraphs 87 to 90 is 
far more judicially conceived, contains a far more searching analysis of 
his nature, is a far nobler, and a far truer portrait, than that in paragraphs 
44 to 48. From it the pupil may gain not only information about 
Milton, but nobler ideals of life and of service. Especially valuable in 
a democratic state is a clear perception by people of all classes of the 
truth conveyed in paragraph 77, that the finest aesthetic emotions of 
human nature are among the precious possessions of mankind, but only 
when these emotions are its servants, not its master (p. 66, 11. 18-20). 

67. 18-28. Again Macaulay utilizes his essay to champion the doc- 
trine of human freedom for which he was to battle in Parliament through- 
out his life. This plea for the "freedom of the human mind" and the 
" unfettered exercise of private judgment " is in reality a plea for Catholic 
emancipation, and for those liberal reforms which have marked English 
legislation in this century. 

C. MILTON'S PROSE WORKS (HH 90-92). 
69. 7+. Leaving abstract discussion, Macaulay again assumes the 
character of a literary critic, this paragraph effecting the transition from 
one line of thought to the other. Macaulay's praise of the prose work is, 

U90. 



ioo QUESTIONS. 

perhaps, not extreme, but the style in which they are written is so far from 
that prevailing at present, that the taste of modern readers rejects even 
what their judgment approves, and these works are read by few except 
students. 

III. Conclusion. 

1JH 93-94. The Sentiments evoked by the Foregoing Study. 

71. 1 +. These concluding paragraphs are marred by a too appar- 
ent striving for effect. In attempting to invest Milton with a pathetic 
and tender interest, Macaulay skirts, if he does not cross, the line that 
parts the sublime from the ridiculous. The aged poet is, indeed, a noble 
and appealing figure, but the phrase quick twinkle of his eyes does not 
suggest the sentiment appropriate to the contemplation of his blindness ; 
the silence is too breathless ; the suggestion of the visitor weeping upon 
his hand is one of bathos not of pathos; and in the closing sentence, 
where climax should appear, the distortion of facts in representing his 
daughters as contesting for the privilege of reading to him creates only 
an impression of the falseness of the emotion expressed in the whole 
paragraph. 

71. 27+. Let the pupil determine critically whether the last para- 
graph adds anything of value to the essay ; whether the second sentence 
does not end in an absurd and superfluous assertion ; whether the 
imagery in lines 5-1 1 and 14-20 (p. 72) is dignified or forceful through- 
out, and whether the closing sentence, lines 19-30, adequately recapitu- 
lates the qualities on which Macaulay has laid emphasis throughout the 
essay. 



QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW. 

On Macaulay's Workmanship. — In what different senses is the 
title " Essay " used ? (p. ix.) Describe the type of essay exemplified 
in Macaulay's writings, (p. x.) What three elements in a literary 
composition should a reader train himself habitually to observe ? 
(p. xi+.) Which of these would be of most obvious importance in a 
poetical work ? Does Macaulay lay stress upon this in his criticism of 
Milton's and Dante's poetry ? Which would probably be of paramount 
importance in a prose work like the essay on Milton ? Is Macaulay's 
work ornate or severe in style? Is it clear or obscure? Are the 
illustrations abundant and varied, or scanty ? Is his critical attitude 
judicial or partisan ? Give some examples of Macaulay's use of 
hyperbole ; of his use of specific and concrete expressions instead of 
general and abstract ones. 



QUESTIONS. ioi 

What is the characteristic feature of Macaulay's critical method, as 
exemplified in this essay ? {i.e. How does he measure, or estimate 
Milton's literary work and his political achievements, the culpability of 
Charles I., etc ?) What equipment does this method presuppose in the 
reader ? Mention some cases where Macaulay colors or misrepresents 
history in order to carry his point with the reader. 

Is this essay symmetrical or irregular in structure ? Into" how many 
main divisions does it fall, and with what subject does each deal ? Is 
a suitable proportion of the whole work assigned to each division ? Are 
the transitions, principal and secondary, clearly indicated ? Are the 
digressions from the main theme duly subordinated to it, or do they 
unpleasantly interrupt its orderly development ? Are any portions of 
the essay evidently inserted to display the writer's learning? Or his 
originality and ingenuity ? Or his eloquence ? Which topic, Milton's 
poetic works or Milton's political career, had been the more fully and 
satisfactorily treated by writers earlier than Macaulay ? Had Macaulay 
any logical reason for the order in which he treated these subjects, 
either in their intrinsic importance, or in the amount of space which he 
intended to devote to each ? What advantage is gained by treating the 
personal phase of his subject at the close of the essay ? {i.e. What 
quality can be appropriately imparted to the style, which will thereby 
render the closing passages more effective ?) 

Indicate the portions of the essay in which Macaulay employs the 
device of stating his opponents' arguments in order to demolish them 
(53+) ! tne portions in which he relies upon invective and sarcasm 
(54, 55, 62, 78) ; the portions in which he relics on brilliancy of rhetoric 
(82, 83). 

On Macaulay's Critical Judgments. —State the character and 
history of the manuscript, the discovery of which was the occasion of 
this essay; why, in Macaulay's opinion, are its contents of slight 
interest to persons already familiar with Milton's life ? (5, 8.) What 
does Macaulay hold to be the chief characteristics of Milton's poetic 
art, (a) in its effect upon the reader ? (&) In its betrayal of the individ- 
uality of the poet ? (c) In its style ? (28-30.) In its mechanism ? 

(33.) 

Summarize Macaulay's estimate of Paradise Lost (32) ; of Paradise 
Regained (31) ; of Comus (29, 30) ; of Samson Agonistes (28) ; of 
Milton's Prose Works (3, 91, 92). Why are not the latter more 
popular ? 

What resemblance and what differences does Macaulay point out in 
the characters and circumstances of Milton and Dante ? (44-46.) 
How far have we reason to think that these are warranted ? What 
four points of difference does he indicate in the workmanship of the 
two men ? (33, 34, 36, 37.) What features does he find common to 



102 QUESTIONS. 

their work and that of yEschylus? (43.) Why does The Divine 
Comedy lend itself more favorably than ^Eschylus' dramas to 
Macaulay's comparative study ? {i.e. What elements in the subject, the 
treatment, and the authorship of The Divine Comedy lead Macaulay to 
choose it as a standard of comparison for the Paradise Lost?) To 
which author does he award the supremacy in each of the matters dis- 
cussed ? From which of the three divisions of The Divine Comedy 
does Macaulay draw most of his comparisons, and why ? 

State in scientific form Macaulay's theory of the relation between prog- 
ress in civilization and the development of scientific powers (11) ; of the 
poetic faculty (10). What arguments does he adduce, drawn from the 
mental operations requisite to the exercise of each kind of power? (12, 13.) 
What arguments drawn from the diverse effects of a highly developed 
civilization upon each class of mental operations? (15, 16.) How 
does he apply his generalization to Milton ? (19.) If we accept his 
demonstration, how is our estimate of Milton's genius affected thereby ? 

What does Macaulay consider to be a necessary agency in the com- 
munication of ideas of the supernatural ? (38, 39.) What four proofs 
from history does he adduce in support of his proposition ? (29.) 
State Macaulay's judgment of the respective merits of Milton and 
^Eschylus in the representation of divine beings. (43.) 

What elements of Milton's character does Macaulay find exhibited in 
his writings? (44,49.) What in his life ? (88-90.) In what ways does he 
color the facts of Milton's life to suit his literary purposes ? (46, 93.) 
How does he regard Milton's services to the general cause of human 
liberty ? (83.) How does Macaulay explain and minimize the excesses 
attendant upon a forcible revolution ? (60-70.) What lesson would he 
have statesmen draw from these excesses ? (68, 71.) 



EXPLANATORY INDEX. 



Academy : The Academie Francaise was founded in 1635, when Car- 
dinal Richelieu transformed an existing organization of poets into 
a national institution created for the purpose of securing in the 
French language the qualities of purity, richness, and refinement. 
To carry out this purpose it pledged itself to compile a dictionary 
and other technical works. In its capacity as final arbiter in ques- 
tions of the disputed pronunciation, spelling, etc., of French words, 
it performs a public service for which no similar English body exists. 

./Eneid : a Latin epic poem by Virgil, treating of the adventures of 
'.(Eneas, who (according to Virgil's narrative) fled from the sack of 
Troy and with a few ships sailed to Italy, landed near the Tiber, and 
after a long conquest with the native tribes of Rutulians laid the 
foundations of the Roman nation. As it is one of the two greatest 
epic poems of antiquity, its translation has been the favorite task of 
ambitious poets. 

.ffischylus (525-455 B - c -). tlie greatest of the Athenian dramatists, 
wrote tragedies on historical and mythological subjects, including 
the Seven (Argive chiefs) against Thebes ; the trilogy of Agamem- 
non {q.v.), Chcephori, and Eumenides ; and Prometheus (a. v.). 

Agag, King of the Amalekites, after being taken prisoner in battle 
against the Israelites, was spared by King Saul, in direct disobedi- 
ence to the command of Jehovah, but was hewed in pieces by the 
prophet Samuel. (1 Sam. xv. 33.) 

Agamemnon : commander of the allied armies at the siege of Troy. 
On his return he was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra,.and her 
paramour, ^Egisthus. This event is made the subject of a drama 
by ^Eschylus {q.v.). 

Aid : a sum of money paid by a vassal to his monarch in fulfilment of 
certain feudal obligations. 

Amadis : the hero of a prose romance that has been popular in Portu- 
guese, Spanish, and French versions. His adventures exhibit him 
in the character of a poet, musician, gallant, knight-errant, and king. 

Aminta : poem by Tasso {q.v.). 

Anathema Maranatha : accursed. 

Anthology : The Greek Anthology is a collection of the most beautiful 
passages to be found in the works of the best Greek authors. 



104 INDEX. 

Arianism : adherence to the doctrines of Arius, an ecclesiastic of the 
fourth century, who taught that Christ was not co-equal or co-eternal 
with God, but was a finite being created by the fiat of the Deity. 
Although these doctrines were stigmatized as heretical by the Church 
of Rome at the Council of Nicea, in 325 A.D., and are contrary to 
the creed of the Church of England, they have claimed adherents in 
all periods of the history of Christianity. 

Arimanes : see " Oromasdes." 

Ariosto (1474-1533) : an Italian poet and statesman. He lived at 
Ferrara, twenty-six miles northeast of Bologna, where he wrote his 
epic poem Orlando Furioso. This was intended as a companion 
poem to the Orlando Inamorata of Boiardo ((/.v.). The subject of 
the former is the chivalrous exploits of Roland, nephew of Charle- 
magne, and its romantic character gives free play to those tenden- 
cies of the poet toward florid description to which Macaulay refers. 
(See M., H 47.) 

Artegal : a knight in Spenser's allegorical poem of The Faerie Queene 
representing in the abstract the quality of justice, and in the concrete 
Lord Grey of Wilton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The goddess 
of justice, says Spenser, presented Artegal with an attendant, a man 
of iron named Talus, — 

" Who in his hand an yron flale did hould, 
With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth unfould." 

Attic Dramatists: /Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides {q.v.). 

Augustan Age : An age in the history of any country made remarkable 
by the excellence of the literature produced therein is likely to be 
called the Augustan Age of that country, because it holds a place in 
its general history like that which the age of Augustus Caesar (42 
B.C-14 A.D.) holds in Roman history. During his reign epic and" 
lyric poetry and history all attained a high degree of excellence 
in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Livy. 

Aurora was goddess of the Dawn, and therefore her face is represented 
as flushed with rosy light. 

Auto da fe : the ceremony of executing a judgment of the Inquisition 
by which a heretic had been condemned to be burned. The phrase 
means " Act of faith." 

Bassanio : a character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, whose 
right to marry the lady he loves depends upon his selecting from 
three caskets, one golden, one silver, and one leaden, that one which 
contains the lady's picture. 

The inscription on the golden one promises him " what many men 
desire," but contains a symbol of Death, desired by the wretched. 



INDEX. 105 

The second offers " what he deserves," and encloses the image of a 
"blinking idiot," such as those lovers deserve who lack humility. 

Belial : that one of the fallen angels depicted by Milton in Paradise Lost 
who was distinguished for slothfulness, guile, and love of evil for its 
own sake. Macaulay seems to have deemed Charles II. worthy to 
be called by this name. 

Bishops, the persecution of: see p. xxv. 

Bolivar, Simon (1783-1830) : the patriot who led the Spanish colonies 
of South America, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, New Gra- 
nada, in their successful revolts against the Spanish rule, between 
1810 and 1824. He was therefore called the Washington of South 
America. 

Bottom : a character in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. He 
was an Athenian weaver, whose head was transformed into that of 
an ass through the magic arts of the mischievous fairy Puck. While 
Bottom was in this condition, Puck caused Titania, queen of the 
fairies, to fall in love with him under the delusion that he was beau- 
tiful. (&«M.N.D. 1 III,i.) 

Boyne, Battle of (July 1, 1690) : the battle which, by the defeat of 
James II., gave to William III. the mastery of Ireland. 

Brissotines : the party of French Revolutionists commonly known as 
the " Girondists." Although opponents of the Monarchy, they stood 
as champions of law, order, and justice against the excesses of the 
extreme " Terrorists." 

Burke, Edmund (1729-1797) : English orator and statesman. In his 
speeches upon the relations between England and her American 
colonies, upon the crimes committed by'Warren Hastings in India, 
and upon the French Revolution, he proved himself to be a con- 
summate master of sustained and impassioned oratory. 

Byron, George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) : an English poet, 
whose great genius was marred by an excessive egotism, a morbid 
taste for the melodramatic, and a defective moral sense. His Childe 
Harold's Pilgrimage, and his tragedies, Manfred, Cain^ Mari?io 
Faliero, Sardanapalus, are, as Macaulay intimates, merely studies 
of a single type of character, that of a brilliant but blighted genius. 
After having forfeited by his excesses and erratic conduct the respect 
of society in England, Byron became a voluntary exile, and spent the 
latter part of his life on the continent, a melancholy and disappointed 
man. The hero of his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, who is repre- 
sented as undergoing a similar experience, has been supposed by 
many to be a remote picture of himself. 

Capuchins : the nickname given to the Franciscan Order of Monks ; so 
named from the small hood (capuchon) which formed a distinctive 
portion of their dress. 



106 INDEX. 

Cassim Baba : a brother of Ali Baba (hero of a tale in the Arabian 
Night's Entertainments). Ali has discovered the mystic formula 
("Open, sesame! "), the utterance of which causes the door of the 
treasure-house of the Forty Thieves to open. His brother, forget- 
ting the name of the grain, vainly calls, " Open barley ! Open wheat ! " 
Circe : an enchantress of ancient mythology, who was fabled to dwell 
on an island in the Mediterranean, near Italy. She offered to her 
victims a magic potion which transformed those who drank it into 
swine. Ulysses, a Greek hero, however, received from the god 
Hermes an herb which formed an antidote to the drug. Circe's 
promontory is the promontory of Circeii, in Latium, now called 
Monte Circello. Since at a distance it appears like an island, tradi- 
tion has identified it with the island mentioned above. 
Clarendon (1608-1674) : Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, was a leading 
statesman of the Restoration {see p. xxi). He wrote a History 
of the Great Rebellion, notable for its graphic anecdotes, its keen 
analysis of motives, and its masterly portraiture of character. 
Collects : brief, comprehensive prayers, forming a part of a liturgy, 
where they are distinguished from the prayers framed for specific 
occasions or appealing for specific blessings. 
Cowley, Dr. Abraham (1618-1667) : an English minor poet, author of 
many poems exhibiting considerable ability, but weighed down with 
uninteresting matter. They include many odes and one epic, the 
Davideis. 
Dante (1265-1321) was the greatest Italian poet. His chief work was 
The Divine Comedy, an epic poem in three parts, the Inferno, the 
Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, which treat respectively of the penalties 
of sin, the process of purification from sin, and the state of the re- 
deemed in heaven. 
De Montfort : see Montfort. 

Denham, Sir John (1615-1659) : author of several poems that won high 
praise from Dryden, Johnson, and other poets of the- last two cen- 
turies, notably the Elegy on Cowley. 
Dissenters : see p. xvii. 
Divine Comedy : see Dante. 

Dominic (1170-1221) : founder of the Order of Dominican Monks, or 
" Preaching Friars." He was a religious enthusiast of great piety 
and learning, but his record is stained by the fanaticism and cruelty 
he displayed in searching out and punishing heresy. 
Don Juan, a brilliant, fascinating, but unscrupulous man of the world, 
is a character that seems to appeal to literary artists. Byron's pres- 
entation of it in the poem of that name is the most elaborate. Mac- 
aulay's reference is to an event in Mozart's opera of Don Giovanni. 
Dryden, John (1631-1700), Poet Laureate of England, was the acknowl- 



INDEX. 107 

edged head of English men of letters in the generation that followed 
Milton. He gave shape to the new literary movement towards scru- 
pulous perfection of technique (due to the influence of the French 
school of Corneille, Racine, and Boileau) that culminated in the work 
of Pope and Addison. He was the author of the most brilliant sat- 
ires in the language {Absalom and Achitophel, MacFtecknoe), 
of numerous religious and political poems {Religio Laid, The Hind 
and the Panther), and of many tragedies and translations. The 
latter included versions not only of works originally written in 
foreign tongues {e.g. The sEneid), but also of English works written 
in a form or style counter to the prevailing taste. His life was 
disturbed by reason of his attitude towards the political troubles of 
the time, but his literary supremacy was undisputed. 

Among his attempts to " modernize " early works is included an 
opera called The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, based on 
Paradise Lost. For this attempt Milton had given the cynical 
permission, " Ay, you may tag my verses." 

Duessa: In Edmund Spenser's Elizabethan epic, The Faerie Qiieene, 
the hero of the first bQok is the Red Cross Knight. The vile enchant- 
ress Duessa is journeying with a wicked knight, Sansfoy, and the 
Red Cross Knight slays and despoils Sansfoy, and carries off Duessa, 
in the belief that she is an injured maiden forcibly held captive by 
Sansfoy. He then overthrows Sansloy, brother of Sansfoy, but the 
latter is rescued by Duessa, who casts about him a " potent spell " 
and conveys him away. 

Dunstan (924-988) , Archbishop of Canterbury, was an able churchman 
and statesman, but he has been charged with employing unscrupulous 
measures in carrying out his plans. 

Elwood, Thomas (1639-1713) : a young Quaker who aided the blind 
poet, Milton, during the composition of the Paradise Lost, by read- 
ing to him such passages from the Latin authors as were needed in 
his work. 

Escobar (1589-1669) : a Spanish theologian, noted for his subtlety and 
. casuistry in so interpreting the Scriptures and analyzing questions 
of ethics as to demonstrate the correctness of his own faith. 

Euripides (480-406 B.C.) : the latest of the trio of great Greek tragic dra- 
matists (Sophocles, TLschylus, Euripides). He wrote about eighty 
dramas, of which the Electra is one ; eighteen still exist. The 
phrase "Sad Electra's poet" is applied by Milton to Euripides in 
order to suggest the tender human pathos characteristic of all his 
tragedies. Macaulay claims that his skill as a playwright, displayed 
in the construction of a complex plot and exciting stage situations, 
sometimes led him to neglect other desirable elements of the dra- 
matic technique. 



108 INDEX. 

Fable of the Bees : a satire in doggerel verse on the moral philosophy 
of Shaftesbury {q.v.) , written by Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) , 
an English author of Dutch parentage. 

Faithful Shepherdess : a pastoral poem written by John Fletcher, an 
English dramatist (1576-1625), in imitation of the Pastor Fido of 
Guarini {q.v.). 

Fifth-monarchy Men : One of the many sects which arose in England 
after the Reformation, through the diverse interpretation of special 
passages of the Scriptures, was that of the Fifth Monarchists. Seiz- 
ing upon the Prophecy of Da?iiel as their oracle, they determined 
that the " four great monarchies " which the author of that book had 
predicted would dominate the earth, had existed in the Assyrian 
Monarchy of Nebuchadnezzar, the Persian of Cyrus, the Greek of 
Alexander, and the Holy Roman Empire. Then by ingenious com- 
putations they determined that the Fifth and last Monarchy therein 
predicted {see Dan. vii.) was now about to be established by the 
return of Jesus Christ to earth as its King, when he would deliver 
over the earth to his saints (including the Fifth-monarchy Men) to be 
ruled by them as his deputies. These sectaries, having intrigued to 
destroy Cromwell, were ruthlessly crushed by him. 

Filicaja, Vincenzio (1642-1707) : a Florentine poet, author of brilliant 
patriotic odes and sonnets ; but certainly not the greatest lyric poet 
of modern times, as asserted in H 58 of the Essay on Addison. 

Fleetwood, Charles (1620-1692) : son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, an 
ardent Puritan, a leading general in the Parliamentary army during 
the Revolution against Charles I., commander-in-chief of the forces 
in Ireland during Cromwell's ascendency, and after Cromwell's death 
the choice of the army for the command of the forces in England. 

Frederick the Great (1712-1786), King of Prussia, was an ardent 
admirer of French culture, and sought in every way to foster it in 
Prussia. He composed several'works in French, and encouraged 
Voltaire, Diderot, and other learned Frenchmen to take up their 
abode at his court. 

Gallio : Roman consul at Corinth during the missionary visit of St. Paul 
to that city to preach Christianity. In the description of the tumult 
aroused by the teachings of Paul (Acts xviii. 17) , Gallio is said by the 
historian to have " cared for none of these things." Hence his name 
has become symbolic of indifference to matters of grave import. 

Genius : a spirit or deity attendant upon an individual and controlling 
his fortunes. The ancients attributed two, a good and a bad, to each 
person. 

Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794) : author of a History of the Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Empire, and a hostile critic of the Christian 
religion. 



INDEX. 109 

Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774), an Irish poet and man of letters, pro- 
duced two fragmentary Histories of England compiled from earlier 
historians. He was in no sense a student of history, and the works, 
produced merely to earn a few shillings, were superficial and inac- 
curate. 
Guarini (1537-1612), an Italian poet, won renown by his II Pastor Fido, 
a poem in the pastoral style. It has grace and tenderness, but is 
artificial and has an excess of ornamentation. 

Gulliver : see Swift. 

Halifax, Charles Montague, Earl of (1661-1715) : a Whig statesman, 
financier, and patron of letters. His devices for raising money for 
the wars of William III. led to the beginning of the English national 
debt, and to the establishment of the Bank of England. He was 
Chancellor of the Exchequer under William III., was out of power 
during the Tory ascendency under Anne, and was restored to power 
only at her death. He served as Prime Minister from the accession 
of George I. until his own death in 1715. 

Helvetius (1715-1771) : a French philosopher, who (accepting Locke's 
theory that the mind is not an original source of ideas, but that 
every idea is the fruit of some bodily sensation) held that the sole 
logical rule of conduct must be to secure the most pleasant sensa- 
tions possible. 

Herodotus (fifth century B.C.) : author of a History of Greece in nine 
books, covering the period from 700-479 B.C. It is of the greatest 
importance to students of ancient history, although of course 
Herodotus had no conception of the necessity of sifting and verify- 
ing alleged historical facts. , 

Hesperides : fabled gardens in the West, where grew the tree that bore 
apples of gold. 

Hume, David (1711-1776), philosopher and historian, was the first 
writer who ever attempted to treat English history in such a way as 
to trace the causes that have determined its course. His History of 
England, although brilliant, is biassed by his Tory political views, 
and by his hostility to the Christian religion. 

Hutchinson, Mrs. Lucy, was the wife of Colonel John Hutchinson 
(1616-1664) , a leader in the Puritan struggle against Charles I. His 
wife shared his experiences in field and prison, and wrote a volume 
of Memories, which gives an accurate and clear account of the 
military and political affairs of the period. 

IagO : a villanous character in Shakespeare's drama of Othello, and 
one of the great dramatist's most profound and masterly character 
delineations. 

Iliad : an epic poem attributed to Homer (about 1000 B.C.), treating of 
the last part of the Trojan War. 



no INDEX. 

Independents : see p. xviii. 

Infanta Catharine: the daughter of King John II. of Portugal, mar- 
ried to Charles Stuart (afterwards King Charles II. of England). 
Instrument of Government : see p. xxi. 

Jacohites : the name applied to the adherents of the exiled Stuarts. 

Jefferies, 1 George, Baron (1648-1689) : Chief Justice of England under 
Charles II. and James II. In his discharge of the duties of this 
office he was so arbitrary, so bloodthirsty, and so corrupt, that his 
name is held in universal detestation. These qualities were espe- 
cially conspicuous in the circuit which he made for the trial of the 
participants in Monmouth's Rebellion. {See pp. xxiv, xxv.) 

Johnson, Samuel (1709-1783) , was a great lexicographer, essayist, critic, 
and conversationalist, but not a great dramatist. A defect common 
to all his writings, due in part to his vast classical erudition, is his 
preference for polysyllabic words, and for stately periodic sentences 
imitated from Latin models. 

His Lives of the Poets contain biographical and critical studies of 
English poets from Cowley to Gray, including Milton, Dryden, Pope, 
Addison, and Swift. His tragedy of Irene (1749), although it had 
the support of Garrick, was withdrawn from the stage after a run of 
only nine days. His story of Rasselas, written under stress of pov- 
erty to obtain funds for the burial of his mother, relates how Prince 
Rasselas was confined in a valley in Abyssinia, called " The Happy 
Valley," in order to remove him from any possible share in the 
miseries that swarm in the world. The " ingenious philosopher" 
referred to by Macaulay in the Essay on Addison, If 26, proposed to 
Rasselas to escape by means of a flying machine, but his first attempt 
to demonstrate the art of flying proved a disastrous failure. 

Klopstock (1724-1803) : the author of a German epic poem, The Mes- 
siah, of Biblical odes, and of patriotic dramas. He was the fore- 
runner of the German romantic school of impassioned poetry, of 
which Schiller was the chief exponent. 

Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury (1573-1645), was the cham- 
pion of the doctrine of absolutism in Church and State, a doctrine 
which both he and his sovereign (Charles I.) defended at the cost 
of their lives, Laud was charged with desiring to " Romanize " the 
Church of England, a charge to which his advocacy of ritualism, of 
the practice of confession, and of the doctrine of the celibacy of the 
clergy, gave support. He was supported by the king in forcing his 
views upon the Church in England and in Scotland. He was im- 

1 This is Macaulay's spelling of the name in the Essay. The Chief Justice 
himself spelled it in various ways, but after being raised to the peerage adhered 
to the spelling " Jeffreys/' the form employed in his "letters patent." This 
latter is the form employed by Macaulay in his History. 



INDEX. in 

peached for treason by the Long Parliament (see p. xx) , and was 
beheaded. 

Lear: one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, dealing with an early 
king of the Britons, who was driven into insanity by the unfilial 
cruelty of his children. 

Ludlow, Edmund (1620-1693) : an unreconcilable antagonist of the 
Early Stuart monarchy (see p. xviii), and the author of a volume of 
Memoirs of Cromwell, valuable because of the honesty of temper 
in which they were composed. Carlyle speaks of " that solid but 
wooden head of his." 

Lycidas : a pastoral poem written by Milton to express his grief for the 
death of his friend, Edward King. The name, from the Greek 
original meaning the " white " or " pure-souled one," is a favorite 
one with pastoral poets, appearing first in the seventh Idyll of The- 
ocritus (g.v.). 

Macaulay, Catherine (1733-1791) : the author of a History of England 
covering the reign of the Stuarts, " more distinguished by zeal than 
by candor or skill." 

Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832) : author of a History of the Revo- 
lution of 1688. (See Macaulay 's Essay on his History.) 

Mandeville : see " Fable of the Bees." 

Marcet, Mrs. Jane (1769- 1858) : the author of elementary treatises on 
political economy, chemistry, and physics. 

Masque : a type of dramatic production that originated in Italy during 
the Renaissance. It was characterized by the combination in one 
play of spectacular scenic effects, music (vocal and instrumental), 
dancing, mythological and classical ornanient, etc. (See Intro- 
duction to Comus, in Milton's Minor Poems, D. C. H. & Co.) 

May, Thomas (1594-1650), Secretary and Historiographer to the Long 
Parliament (see p. xx), was commissioned to produce a History of 
the Parliament of England. The portion covering the period from 
1640-1643 was printed in 1647, before the Civil War was ended, and 
as May died in 1650 the work lacks completeness. 

Millennial year : the period when, according to ancient prophecy, the 
kingdom of Christ shall be established and exert unbroken sway 
over the entire earth. (See " Fifth-monarchy Men.") 

Milton, John (1608-1674) : for life see p. xxvii. For works see p. xxix+. 

Moloch : the most fierce and reckless of the devils described in Milton's 
Paradise Lost a.s havingforfeited heaven by their rebellion against God. 

Montague, Charles : see Halifax. 

Montfort, Simon de (1200-1265) : leader of the English barons in their 
struggle against the tyranny of their feudal head, Henry III. De 
Montfort was the earliest champion of the representation of the 
Commons in the government. 



ii2 INDEX. 

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727) : the world's most profound and origi- 
nal scientific investigator, who gave to the world the theory of gravi- 
tation. He was also one of the most gifted mathematicians in an 
age when great mathematicians abounded. He was Professor of 
Mathematics in Cambridge University, and President of the Royal 
Society. 

Niobe : a character in Greek mythology, who mourned so incessantly 
for the death of all her children that the gods, in pity, turned her to 
stone. The legend furnishes a favorite subject for artists. 

Oldmixon, John (1673-1743) : author of Histories of England, Scotland, 
Ireland, and America, lor the dulness of which he was attacked by 
Pope in the Dunciad as a perverter of history. 

Oromasdes and Arimanes : the names of the " principles (or deities) 
of good and evil " of the Parsee religion. Later forms of the names 
are Ormuzd and Ahriman. 

Osiris : the chief Egyptian god, offspring of Heaven and Earth. . His 
temple was at Memphis. 

Othello, the central figure in the tragedy of that name, strangles his 
wife because of his conviction that she is unfaithful to him, yet first 
dwells with tenderest emotion on the beauty and the sweetness that 
had won his love. 

" O balmy breath, that does almost persuade 
Justice to break her sword, . . . 
Be thus when thou art dead and I will kill thee 
And love thee after." — Act V. Sc. ii. 

Parliament, The Long. See p. xx. 

Petition of Right : see p. xix. 

Petrarch (1304-1374) : an Italian poet and historian of high rank. His 
compositions of most abiding interest are a series of love poems 
(sonnets and songs) addressed to " Laura," on whom he has con- 
ferred an immortality only less secure than that conferred by Dante 
upon " Beatrice " in the Divine Comedy. 

Pindar : a Greek poet of the fifth century B.C. He is called the " Theban 
Eagle " because of the soaring imagination and spirit exhibited in 
his triumphal Odes, the only complete examples of his work extant. 

Plato (427-347 B.C.) : the greatest Athenian philosopher. 

Plutarch (66-120) : the author of a series of Parallel Lives, biograph- 
ical sketches in Greek, treating of twenty-three Greek and twenty- 
three Roman public characters. These biographies, alike because 
of their historical and their literary value, have always been eagerly 
read by students. 

Popish Trials : see p. xxiii. 

Presbyterians : see p. xviii. 



INDEX. 113 

Prometheus: In /Eschylus' tragedy of Prometheus Vinctus, Prometheus 
is a rrrinor deity who has incurred the anger of Zeus by daring to 
stand forth as the champion of the human race against his tyranny. 
He is first punished by being chained to a rock in Scythia, and on 
his continued resistance to the will of Zeus is hurled by a thunder- 
bolt into Tartarus. Later he is chained to Mount Caucasus, and is 
tortured by an eagle that daily rends his flesh. 

Quintilian (42-118 a.d.) : the most celebrated teacher of rhetoric in 
ancient Rome ; author of a work on Rhetoric in twelve books. 

Rabbinical literature was the literature created by the Jewish ex- 
pounders of the Law of Moses, and contained many mystical doc- 
trines. 

Rhapsodists : , bards who made a profession of memorizing and reciting 
episodes from the works of Homer. 

Rotherhithe : a district of London frequented by seafaring people. 

Roundheads : a derisive epithet applied to those Puritans who wore 
their hair cropped close as a protest against the fashionable manner 
of dressing the hair adopted by the gallants at the court. 

Round Table : a traditional expression for the body of knights organized 
by the legendary British King Arthur (sixth century) into a fraternity 
for the purpose of defending chastity, loyalty, honor, law, and order 
.within his realm. 

Rye-house Plot : see p. xxv. 

Salmasius (1588-1658) : an erudite scholar and jurist, probably best 
known through his controversy with Milton in regard to the defen- 
sibility of the execution of Charles I. {see p. xx). He was employed 
by the exiled son of Charles to write a Defense of the King, which 
proved to be a farrago of scurrilities. To this, at the request of Par- 
liament, Milton responded with his Defense of the English People, 
although convinced that the labor of preparing it would complete 
the threatened ruin of his eyesight. Salmasius returned to the 
attack, and Milton replied with a Second Defense. 

Seals : Royal proclamations and other official documents ol the British 
government are valid only when they have been sealed with a cer- 
tain seal (depending on the character of the document) . These seals 
are placed in the custody of special officers, who are responsible 
for their proper use. At a time when the monarch's will was para- 
mount, as in the reign of Henry VIII., no custodian would venture 
to refuse to seal a royal document ; but after the Privy Council had 
asserted itself as a champion of the rights of the English people 
against the aggressions of the Crown, an officer, supported by its 
authority, might venture to refuse the seal to a royal edict that was 
obviously tyrannical. 

Shaftesbury, Ashley Cooper, Earl of (1621-1683) : see p. xxiii +. 



ii4 INDEX. 

Shaftesbury, Anthony, Third Earl of (1671-1713), was an indifferent 
philosopher. In his Characteristics of Man, Maimers, and Opinions 
he elaborated a system of philosophy based on three propositions ; 
that ridicule is the test of truth; that men possess an innate moral 
sense, and that "Whatever is, is best." This system corresponds 
closely to that expounded in Pope's philosophical poem, the Essay 
on A/an, although that poem is commonly supposed to give expres- 
sion to Bolingbroke's metaphysical speculations. The theory of 
an "innate moral sense" is opposed, in philosophy, to the theory 
that ideas of right and wrong arise wholly from man's experience of 
what is beneficial or harmful to himself. 

Ship Money : see p. xx. 

Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, Duke of (1660-17 18), was a leading 
statesman during the reigns of William III., Anne, and George I. 
He played a prominent part in securing the accession of the Hano- 
verians and was made Lord High Treasurer by George I. 

Skinner, Cyriac, was a pupil of Milton, and to him were addressed two 
of Milton's finest sonnets, Nos. xi. and xvii. 

Somers, John, Lord Somers (1652-J716), was the leader, official or un- 
official, of the Whig party during the reigns of William III. and Anne. 
Indeed, he was a leader in the events that gave rise to that party; for 
he acted as counsel for the defence in the trial of the seven bishops 
(see p. xxv), and was chairman of the committee appointed to frame 
the immortal Declaration of Right (see p. xxvi). He was appointed 
Attorney-general, then Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and later 
Lord High Chancellor, by William III. His impeachment by his 
Tory enemies, in 1701, although unsuccessful, forced him thereafter 
to maintain a subordinate position until his death, except during the 
two years of Whig supremacy (1708-1710), when he was Lord 
President of the Council. 

Macaulay evinces marked admiration for his character, distin- 
guished as it was for directness and adherence to principle in an age 
of tortuous statecraft and time-serving politicians. 

Sophocles (496-405 B.C.) : a tragic poet of Athens, the rival of ^Eschylus 
(q.v.) ; author of Antigone, Ajax, Q2dipus Tyrannus, and other 
plays, all notable for their mastery over dramatic situations, their 
character delineation, and their pathos. 

Star Chamber : a court composed of a committee of the Privy Council 
and two chief justices, that, by the exercise of extraordinary power 
unknown to law courts, proved a suitable instrument for the tyranny 
of Charles I. 

Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of (1593-1641) : the chief min- 
ister of Charles I., was with Laud (q.v.) an upholder of that principle 
of absolute government in Church and State for which the Stuarts 



INDEX. 115 

contended {see p. xix). Wentworth was impeached of high treason 
and sent to the block, eight years before the king, his master, suf- 
fered a similar fate. 

Sumner, Charles R. (1790-1874), was made Bishop of Winchester two 
years after his work in translating and editing the manuscript of 
Milton's essay on Christian Doctrine. 

Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1667-1745), was cele- 
brated as a churchman, politician, and man of letters. His great 
genius was employed chiefly in a battle against the hard conditions 
of his life, against the dishonesty and selfishness of the society amid 
which he moved, and against the political opponents that he hated. 
He was given a poor ecclesiastical office in Dublin, far removed from 
all the intellectual companionships in London that he esteemed the 
" ornament of life." In Ireland, as in England, he devoted his ener- 
gies to the righting of public wrongs, and here, too, he composed 
-that greatest of satires, Gulliver's Travels, in which he attacked the 
greatest and the meanest vices of mankind in a spirit of bitter 
indignation at the degradation which they disclose in the human 
race. 

In this romance an Englishman named Lemuel Gulliver visits 
many strange regions, among them the flying island of Laputa, a 
country inhabited by a race of philosophers. The natives are so 
strongly inclined to reflection that they would be wholly oblivious to 
the outer world were it not for attendants who recall their wandering 
thoughts by flapping their faces with an inflated bladder. 

Tasso, Torquato (1544-1595) : the third in the trio of Italian epic poets 
of the first rank. (Dante, fourteenth century ; Ajiosto, fifteenth cen- 
tury ; Tasso, sixteenth century.) His most celebrated works are 
the pastoral poem of Atninta, and the epic Jerusalem Delivered. 
The latter treats of the victories that marked the " First Crusade for 
the Holy Sepulchre." It was criticised as exhibiting too little his- 
torical accuracy and too little regard for the conventional rules of 
epic composition, and as dwelling too much upon profane matters, 
to the ignoring of the religious side of the crusade. Tasso therefore 
recast it as Jerusalem Captured. 

Theocritus (third century B.C.), by the production of his Idylls (i.e. 
Scenes from Country Life) , became the creator of the type of pastoral 
poetry. 

Thomas, called Didymus, was a disciple of Jesus Christ. After the 
execution of Christ, Thomas was unable to believe in his resurrec- 
tion from the dead without tangible proof; the name " doubting 
Thomas " is therefore given to the class of persons who find doubt 
more easy than belief. {See Gospel of St. John xx. 24.) 

ThyT8is : the name taken by an angel in the Masque of Comus, when, 



u6 INDEX. 

having been sent by God to guard the heroine of the play from evil, 
he disguised himself as a shepherd in order to escape attention. 

Tol?,nd, John (1669-1722) : author of many controversial religious 
works, and of a Life of Milton published in 1698. 

Tyburn: a hill west of the old city of London, on which malefactors 
were formerly hanged. After the Restoration, the bodies of Crom- 
well, Ireton, and Bradshaw were taken from their tombs in West- 
minster Abbey and hanged at Tyburn to satisfy the desire of the 
Royalists for revenge. 

Vandyke dress : Sir Anthony Van Dyck was the Court painter ©f 
Charles I., and his portraits of the king and of his courtiers have 
W*on such celebrity that the type of costume in which he habitually 
posed his subjects has received the appellation of the " Vandyke " 
costume. For illustration see page 44. 

Vane, Sir Henry (1612-1662) : a champion of the Parliamentary cause 
in the struggle against the tyranny of Charles I. In politics he was 
a republican, in religion a Fifth Monarchist {g.v.). 

Walpole, Robert, Lord Orford (1676-1745), was the greatest Whig 
statesman of his time. He was Secretary, first of War, and then of 
the Navy, under Anne, but was disgraced by the triumphant Tories 
in 1712. His power under the Hanoverian monarchs, at first weak, 
rapidly approached absolutism, although he had such antagonists 
as Bolingbroke and Swift to combat. He was at various times a 
Privy Councillor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Paymaster-general, 
and Lord Treasurer. Finding his influence waning as Pitt forced 
himself into notice, Walpole resigned his offices in 1742, accepted 
a peerage, and retired to private life. 

Whig : see p. xxv. 

Whitefriars : a district west of the old city of London, which, under the 
name of " Alsatia," was long a place of refuge for thieves and out- 
laws of every description. These herded there in such numbers 
that it was unsafe for officers of the law to enter the district. 

Wood, Anthony (1632-1695) : an antiquarian who devoted most of his 
life to researches in the history of Oxford University, including the 
lives of its eminent alumni. 

Wotton, Sir. Henry (1568-1639) : a diplomatist, scholar, and educator. 
He befriended John Milton, not only by his stimulating praise of the 
somewhat immature Comus, but also by aiding him. in making his 
foreign tour both pleasant and profitable. 

Xeres : a river in Spain, flowing through a district renowned for its pro- 
duction of " Sherry " wines. 



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